How we're working to reduce ecommerce's climate impact
Carbon offsetting is a way to compensate for the carbon dioxide we spew into the atmosphere by funding projects that reduce greenhouse gases or absorb carbon from the air. At cgk.ink, this means investing in renewable energy sources, reforestation efforts, and energy-efficient technologies that help balance out the environmental impact of shipping and packaging.
Stripe Climate is the easiest way to help promising permanent carbon removal technologies launch and scale. cgk.ink has joined a growing group of ambitious businesses that are changing the course of carbon removal.
Carbon Balance Pte. Ltd. is a sustainability platform based in Singapore providing a calculator API to measure the GHG footprint of ecommerce transactions and an Integration Plugin for popular ecommerce enablers such as WooCommerce, EasyStore, Shopify with flexible options to offset footprint by contributing to trustworthy projects.
These pieces of software complement our other intiatives, such as:
Combining shipping when available to further reduce our carbon footprint
Allowing you to control the speed of delivery so excessive emmissions are avoided
Using recyclable packaging to reduce the overall impact of shipping.
Examples of current carbon-offsetting efforts:
Google Travel, as well as other travel and hotel search sites, have formulated a way to compare carbon emission variations among similar routes. The impetus is on both the airline and the consumer to choose among the available options with ecological criteria being included.
Earlier this year, a satellite photo of a mountain of discarded clothes in Chile’s Atacama Desert went viral:
Clearly visible from space, it once again raised questions about the amount of waste the fashion industry is creating, and what we can do about it.
I’ve written a lot about fashion’s evil influence on trashing our planet. It’s fairly insane.
there is hope:
“Instead of dyes you could use the structure of the fibre itself, the same for water repellency, rather than coating it, or to make wrinkle-free fabrics.”
While the term “fast fashion” was originally coined to refer to the short length of time clothes took to go from the design stage to shop, it has come to mean endless consumption of cheap clothes.
Admit it. It’s fun to laugh at global warming deniers. Until you realize that they’re serious.
Design can be many things, but the thing at which it succeeds best is education. Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) has created a graphic entitled “Climate Stripes” which make an eloquent, and damning point. The Earth is indeed warming. Terrifyingly so:
since 2000, heating of the planet has in fact continued at a rate equivalent to more than 250 billion 1KW household electric heaters. This is based upon evidence from thousands of automated ocean buoys that measure down to a depth of nearly 2km, combined with global satellite data measuring radiative energy entering and leaving the planet. Recent research indicates the current slowing in the rate of surface warming is primarily caused by natural ocean variability linked to La Niña conditions affecting the Pacific. During the 1980s and 1990s, heating from greenhouse gases warmed the upper layers of the ocean, which affected global surface temperatures. In the 2000s, changes in ocean circulation have caused this additional heat energy to affect deeper layers beneath the sea surface as demonstrated using a combination of simulations and observations.
cgk.ink cares deeply about this topic. We’re proud to be an early adopter of Stripe (our credit card processor) Climate, joining over 25K small and large businesses. We contribute 1% to the Climate fund which uses that money to fund large-scale carbon removal.
To be clear, we contribute 1%, not you (although you are welcome to!). This contribution is not factored into our pricing and is automatically processed through Stripe.
We are all connected. This is not a kumbaya moment from us to you. It is real and indisputable. You, your actions, and your thoughts affect everyone and everything around you.
This is neither abstract nor a slogan. It is critically important. Your actions have immediate, measurable and wide-ranging effects.
This inescapable fact is evident in spades when we talk about the degradation of our environment. And this deleterious effect is nowhere more evident than in the fashion industry.
It’s well-documented just how toxic fashion is. And it’s data can be overwhelming. Indeed, only gas & oil production is more polluting.
LOOKING good can be bad for the planet. Massive amounts of energy, water and other resources are needed to make clothes. From the pesticides poured on cotton fields to the washes in which denim is dunked, making 1kg of fabric generates 23kg of greenhouse gases on average, reckons McKinsey, a consultancy. Because consumers keep almost every type of apparel only half as long as they did 15 years ago, these inputs go to waste faster than ever before. More than half of the fastest-fashion items made are chucked away within a year of production. But such rampant retail therapy costs the earth.
The Environmental Costs of Creating Clothes, Forbes, August 11, 2017
fashion ain’t pretty, doll.
The film below details in great depth the heinous environmental abuse created by a culture of fast fashion. Schein, TEMU, AMAZON, H&M, all create an insatiable lust for disposable apparel.
what this means to you (and cgk.ink):
We’re proud to be an early member of STRIPE’s CLIMATE initiative. We’ve joined over 200K small to large businesses in this industry effort. As our payment processor, we pay a 1% fee to STRIPE’s Carbon Removal efforts. It may not seem like a large amount, but when taken in aggregate, the efforts become powerful.
Wherever possible we select environmentally beneficial materials, created responsibly. You can find our latest efforts on this by selecting the ECO-LOGICAL COLLECTION from the SPECIAL COLLECTION menu.
We’ve added the option to contribute a small amount when selecting your shipping method to offset carbon emissions intrinsic in moving your purchase from A to B.
MINDFULNESS
Ecology is only a part of what we care about. We work closely with suppliers and vendors to make sure that our business relationship is founded on fair and equitable compensation and adherence to globally recognized labor laws.
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