Our commitment to becoming a carbon neutral company

Originally published on the Zappi Blog in 2020

In 2019, we started an initiative to function as a carbon neutral company. Based on our efforts, we predict a 55% decrease in CO2 emissions from 2019 to 2020. Here are the steps we’ve taken so far to reduce our carbon footprint and what we hope to achieve looking forward.

It’s easy to assume that software companies in the tech space are ‘clean,’ and that carbon reduction and carbon offsetting are not as much of an issue. After all, software companies don’t make things or have to worry about packaging, and they certainly don’t churn out fumes. But there are still many things, such as travel and office waste, that contribute to our carbon footprint.

Here at Zappi, we dug a little deeper and looked into some of the emissions that we are responsible for, and what we can do to reduce them.

In this article, we’ll cover the three main areas we identified for reduction, what we are doing to lower our emission levels in these areas, and the progress we’ve made on becoming a carbon neutral company.

Mapping our emissions

To start, back in 2019 we built an in-house emissions calculator to effectively track and map the emissions we were contributing to.

Through this calculator, we are able to thoroughly track and audit the areas that were emitting the highest levels of CO2 into the environment. Our results indicated that business travel (largely flights) accounted for the lion’s share of CO2 emissions, followed by servers, and office waste.

1. Business travel

As an international organization with employees on the ground in more than 10 countries (and clients in many more), Zappi has always aimed to minimize and optimize travel. This is typically done through investing heavily in remote-working technologies and practices, along with supporting employees working from home.

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While we are a global organization, we’re also digital natives. We work hard to make Zoom meetings as manageable and personable as “real” meetings — with the goal of reducing the number of needless flights.

But there are still other methods of travel, such as commuting, that contribute to emissions on a daily rate. With the majority of employees living in metropolitan areas, and many relying on low-but-not-zero-impact public transport, Zappi has begun actively encouraging cycling as an option to get to work, with showers at the office, secure storage, and the UK “cycle to work” scheme.

We know cycling isn’t for everyone, so we also encourage employees to flex their workday hours to make commutes on public transport more productive.

Obviously, we’re further ahead on cutting down on air travel and commute emissions in general this year — the global pandemic has caused even the most tech-skeptic workplaces to invest heavily in remote work practices.

If and when air travel becomes the norm again, we will need to be vigilant to ensure we don’t regress on our progress.

2. Servers

Of the areas we could improve, servers (the software industry’s dirty little secret!) were the most challenging to address. With the rise of cloud computing moving almost all servers offsite, this is an area that’s easy to overlook — out of sight, out of mind. However, from energy usage to chemical and electronic waste, the emissions that stem from server usage are real and significant.

At Zappi, we use Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since exact server emissions aren’t typically released to the public, it isn’t easy to determine hard numbers. But after some deep diving, our team was able to derive usable figures to add to our emissions calculator.

Fortunately, AWS is also making an effort to reduce emissions. With the goal of achieving 100% renewable energy usage by 2025, their notable drive for reduction will only help us to achieve our own goals as we move forward.

3. In the office (the little bits matter too)

Food, lighting, waste, it all adds up! Even though these are much smaller list items, every bit makes an impact. From reducing the use of plastic, to eliminating paper usage, and implementing timed lighting systems, we’ve taken a lot of steps to do what we can in our office spaces.

Our largest office in London operates a zero-to-landfill policy and has terminated relationships with lunch providers who insist on plastic packaging (or worse, single use plastic cutlery!). Our Cape Town office has also actively begun tracking and reducing waste. And in our American and Asia-Pacific WeWork offices, while it’s more difficult to quantify, we routinely push to expose the waste-handling and carbon footprint per-seat.

We’ve also established a recycling program in many of our offices, purchase locally sourced food for in-office lunches, and have “nudges” to keep us green! Some of these nudges include placing photos of plastic-strewn beaches above recycling bins as a reminder of our impact on the environment and sharing our annual CO2 emissions on the screens of our headquarters.

Our progress

By taking action and implementing solutions based on our emissions audit, we’ve targeted a 55% reduction in CO2 emissions by the end of 2020, even as Zappi continues to grow. These emissions will be tracked on an annual basis, using our in-house emissions calculator.

Looking onward, we plan to then offset the last 400 tonnes of emissions through a dedicated tree planting initiative. We’ve set an audacious goal to plant one million trees!

Final thoughts

Zappi is committed to doing what we can to protect our planet by reducing our carbon footprint through a company-wide behavior change and carefully chosen offset schemes.

As we mentioned before, being a software company in the tech space, one might assume that we are “clean.” However, business travel, server usage, and ensuring our offices are up and running are still responsible for a significant amount of CO2 emissions. Knowing what’s possible now, during a global pandemic, only raises our standards to reduce our footprint in future with unknown workplace and travel norms.

We’re confident that over the next few years, taking this kind of action to better our planet will become the norm rather than an exception. Once we’ve reduced what we can, we’ll offset the remainder of our emissions to reach net-zero for 2020. To help us keep our goals aligned as we move forward, we’ve used a now-next-later horizon framework:

• Now: Zappi will be carbon neutral
• Next: Zappi will embed environmentalism in its strategy
• Later: Zappi leads a carbon neutral industry and world

You’ve got to dream big, right?

With thanks to ZappiStore, Felix Drinkall, Kelsey Sullivan, and Tom Holliss.

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