Business insights: Addressing Carbon Emissions

We all know about Carbon Emissions, we’ve heard it on the news, seen it on social media… but how does a business like ours address these emissions?

One of our goals at The Sustainable Watch Company is to have Carbon negative operations. This means that through fulfilling our day to day business activities, rather than adding carbon to the atmosphere, we are taking carbon out of the atmosphere, helping reduce the pollution of our beautiful planet earth. Pretty cool right?

To achieve this, there are 3 scopes of carbon emissions a business, including our own, has to consider.

Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources

These are the easiest carbon emissions to identify, and the most straight forward to address. A businesses scope 1 emissions are the carbon foot print of their owned operations, for example the fuel consumption of a businesses fleet of vehicles or the energy efficiency of their offices. So how could a business address this? Take the energy efficiency of their offices as an example, a business can switch to energy efficient light bulbs and install timers to automatically switch off lights or appliances. Did you know most commercial buildings could cut their green house gas emissions by 70% with efficient design and use of cleaner electricity?

Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy

Energy companies can't supply energy without generating some form of emissions right? Therefore, a business is responsible for a portion of their chosen energy companies emissions, the carbon emissions of the energy they consumed for their operations. It is important to remember that this is still a controlled source, as a business can influence the amount of emissions that come through this channel. One way a business can address this is by selecting a supplier who provides renewable energy, or investing in their own onsite renewable energy sources, such as solar panels, to reduce their reliance on energy companies.

Scope 3: Emissions as a result of a businesses activity, that are not owned or controlled by the business

 These are the most difficult emissions to identify and address, but hugely important. Scope 3 emissions are on average 5.7x a businesses scope 1 and 2 emissions. Examples of this include emissions as a result of a businesses chosen suppliers manufacturing process, upstream and downstream transportation of products. A business can reduce their scope 3 emissions through transport decarbonisation. At The Sustainable Watch Company, we reduce our scope 3 emissions through transport decarbonisation. All of the shipping of our watches and watch straps is carbon neutral, meaning we produce zero carbon emissions from our shipping activities. You can learn more about how we do this in our blog Keeping our shipping green!.

Hopefully this helped provide some clarity on the different levels carbon emissions that organisations have to account for when striving to become Carbon Negative like us!

You can view our full range of handmade wristwatches and straps made from recycled natural wood furniture here. Remember, we plant one tree with every purchase through our partnership with One Tree Planted!