HigherRing is excited to announce that on March 7, 2023, we officially secured our status as a carbon-neutral company through our certification with the nonprofit Climate Neutral. As a B Corp, 1% for the Planet member, and American Sustainable Business Network (ASBN) member, this was the clear next step for HigherRing to use business as a force for good.

We believe that businesses should take responsibility for the climate disaster. We refuse to look the other way in favor of making decisions that improve the bottom line yet put people and the planet at risk. Sustainability has been at the forefront of HigherRing’s mission since our founding, and we are invested in continuing to uplift that goal through our vendor partnerships, supply chain, and even with the clients we choose to support.

In October 2021, the HigherRing Board of Directors resolved to declare a climate emergency and work towards carbon neutrality by 2025. We are thrilled to announce that we have met our goal two years early.

What does it mean to be Climate Neutral Certified?

Climate Neutral’s certification builds on internationally recognized standards for carbon measurement and neutrality. All certified brands must measure cradle-to-customer greenhouse gas emissions each year to maintain certification. Then a brand must buy eligible verified carbon credits to compensate for their emissions, directing investment into critical projects that remove and avoid emissions from energy, industry, and natural systems. Finally, brands must commit to reduction action plans to cut future emissions within a 12-24 month timeline, reporting progress on those plans annually. All of the brand’s certification data is publicly available on Climate Neutral’s website, and the process is repeated annually when companies must recertify. Together, Climate Neutral Certified brands are impacting climate action right now, working to eliminate more than 1,000,000 tonnes of carbon emissions this year.

So why does it matter?

Scientists and environmentalists have determined that global emissions must be reduced dramatically before 2030, or we will hit a tipping point. If things don’t change soon, it will become impossible to keep the earth’s temperature from rising another 2 degrees celsius which sounds small, but it’s not. This rise in temperature will mean more devastating storms, melting ice caps leading to higher sea levels, large-scale plant and animal extinctions, more forest and grassland fires, and deaths from heat, smog, and infectious disease. With time running short, it must be a top priority for all entities — government, communities, individuals, and businesses to not only make change but to demand change. HigherRing is one such business that will make a change by reducing and offsetting our carbon emissions year over year, managing our waste stream consciously, maintaining a fully remote team, and supporting clients that equally value all of the above. We will demand change by participating in political activism as a team and by promoting a culture where our staff is supported in casting their individual ballots.

How does Climate Neutral certification work?

Climate Neutral prompts participating businesses to take a close look at their operations, supply chain, and day-to-day consumption to measure their emissions. According to the Climate Neutral website: “Carbon accountability involves companies investing within and beyond their value chain. If consumers demand this higher standard, they will get companies to do more. Together, we can accelerate the change we need to significantly reduce carbon emissions. We can choose to stabilize the climate.”

To achieve this goal and become carbon-neutral certified, HigherRing has gone through the required steps to measure, reduce and offset our carbon footprint.

Measure: We spent several months reviewing our supply chain and were able to measure our 2021 carbon footprint at 157 tonnes of C02 [tCO2e].

Reduce: We identified two main areas where we can reduce/eliminate our carbon emissions: transportation and employee gifting.

Compensate: We have partnered with the nonprofit Bonneville Environmental Foundation (https://www.b-e-f.org/) to purchase 158 tonnes of carbon credits in projects that support wind energy generation and projects that capture methane gas from landfills.

If you’d like to learn more about what it means to use carbon offsets visit offsetguide.org. To help your company begin the process of becoming Climate Neutral, have a look here. To check out HigherRing’s company profile on the Climate Neutral website, click here.

Are your business partners making this same commitment? If they’re not, and you want to be part of the solution, consider switching your supply chain partners to ones that recognize the existential threat and are working to be responsible business partners. Or demand that they also walk the walk here.

About HigherRing: At HigherRing, our mission is to be a catalyst for a more sustainable world by hiring savvy onshore workers to power growing businesses. We represent clients in the purpose-driven space and are proud to be a certified B Corp. Our team works hard every day and uses all of our intellectual capital to make our client’s businesses successful because we know that our efforts are magnified by their work to make the world a better place.