Consumers Net Zero engagement

How businesses reduce their carbon emissions to tackle climate change crisis – and how you as a consumer can help

In 2023 global carbon emissions reached a new record of 37.4 billion tonnes, calling for bolder action to decarbonize economic activities across all sectors on a global scale.

Businesses all over the globe take measures to their carbon footprint. They actively use technologies with lower carbon footprint, such as renewable energy, electric transportation, sustainable materials, etc., implement energy efficiency programs, as well as offset anything they cannot reduce themselves through carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects (the easiest one to understand is planting trees which absorb carbon as they grow; however, there are multiple other CCS solutions out there in the market). And many companies are already going beyond their own operations and consider carbon footprint of their entire value chains.    

Now that businesses’ efforts are clear, how can you as a consumer participate in Net Zero transition?
To start with, any business activity, such as production of goods or rendering services, causes carbon emissions. Businesses can try to reduce them as much as possible and to offset the remainder through CCS. 

As regards consumers, they are ‘buying’ carbon footprint together with the goods and services they are purchasing from companies, but are not in control of how much emissions the companies they are buying from are causing. This prompts the logic that the majority of consumer climate action solutions are following - they calculate emissions associated with the goods and services consumers are buying and offer consumers to offset them, e.g. through purchases of carbon credits or investments/donations to verified CCS projects.

That, of course, helps compensate for companies' emissions (at consumers' cost), but is not directly linked to intrinsic reduction of emissions in companies’ business processes.
So can consumers directly support companies’ efforts to reduce carbon footprint?

Well, consider that by buying from brands, you contribute to the companies’ revenues. Following the same logic, as companies’ operations cause carbon emissions, buying goods and services, you share the companies’ carbon emissions. To generalize things, your share in a company’s carbon emissions is proportional to the share of your spending in the company’s revenues. (In the international methodology the level of carbon emissions per certain amount of revenues (e.g. 1 million  dollars) is called carbon intensity of sales). 

Likewise, when you buy from a company which is reducing emissions, you share this reduction pro rata your share in revenues.  
Code2 helps consumers support companies to reduce their intrinsic carbon footprint by diverting spending to more climate friendly companies with tangible and transparent impact. Moreover, unlike incurring costs to offset carbon footprint, we make climate action rewarding for consumers. Stay tuned for further details on our Code2 consumer rewards.

Questions or comments? We will love to hear from you! info@code2.world