The Daily - Day 1 - June 18, 2019 - 37

CO U R T E SY P E A K D E S I G N

talking with companies outside
of the outdoor industry, including
Lyft and SalesForce, they're debuting it at Summer Market because
they believe the outdoor industry
can become an effective leader for
carbon neutrality certification.
"The outdoor industry has a great
history of being proactive on issues
of the environment," Cedar says.
"This is a very well-accepted priority in the outdoor industry."
The industry already operates
with environmental stewardship
in mind, and some companies are
already carbon neutral-or moving
toward it. Even small companies
have sustainability directors. "[BioLite] has had a full-time carbon
expert on staff for almost our
whole history to support our work
in Africa," Cedar says. Patagonia
has pledged to "eliminate or mitigate" its carbon footprint by 2025.
But for small and midsize manufacturers, tackling a slew of issues-from using recycled materials to calculating carbon emissions
down the supply chain-can be
overwhelming. Cedar and Dering
hope Climate Neutral certification
will simplify carbon neutrality and
make it attainable.
Dering started considering Peak
Design's carbon footprint in 2017.
"I thought, God, we're shipping a
lot of stuff around," Dering says.
"This is a lot of plastic and metal
and textiles." His curiosity led him
to hire auditing firm 3Degrees to
find out just how much carbon the
company was responsible for. They
found Peak Design's Scope 1, or
direct emissions, were negligible
(they don't own a building or company cars). Its Scope 2 emissions-
how it powers the business from
the grid-added up to 23 metric
tons. Not terrible. But its Scope 3
emissions, which includes indirect
emissions from travel, shipping,
waste, purchased materials, and
the end-life of products, amounted
to 16,756 metric tons.
Analyzing Scope 3 emissions
can get complicated and expensive
fast. For many manufacturers in
North America, much of the carbon
costs hit before the raw materials
or products themselves even arrive

on the continent. Things like textile
manufacturing, alloy extraction, and
cargo shipping, for example, come
into play. And it's difficult to track
third parties. Peak Design decided
to allow for some margin of error
and round up the figure 3Degrees
gave them to 20,000 metric tons-
and offset that amount.
"We paid the average price for a
ton of CO2, which is three bucks,"
Dering says. "So, for $60,000, we
had offset the cost of our company for 2017. And of course, we
were like, Whoa, this is too easy.
One fifth of our 1% for the Planet
budget? If that's the case, how
come everyone isn't doing this very
low bar for responsibility? That

Peak Design
CEO Peter
Dering.

CLIMATE NEUTRALITY COST LESS THAN
DERING THOUGHT: PEAK DESIGN'S
BEST-SELLER, THE EVERYDAY BACKPACK,
RETAILS FOR $260, AND THE TOTAL OFFSET ON IT AMOUNTED TO JUST 30 CENTS.

became the question I was asking
on repeat." Invariably the answer
Dering got was that companies
didn't think carbon neutrality was
within reach.
Dering decided to take the analysis all the way back to 2011, when
Peak Design's first product was
released, and offset everything. It
cost $244,000.
It was a wake-up call for Dering
that climate neutrality doesn't
have to be so complicated that it
causes analysis paralysis. And it
cost less than he thought: Peak
Design's best-seller, the Everyday
Backpack, retails for $260, and
the total offset on it amounted to
just 30 cents.
Dering talked to Cedar about it
and learned he wasn't the only one
asking why more companies didn't
know that going carbon neutral
was an attainable goal.
"We've been a mission-based impact business since our inception,
so BioLite has been footprinting
and offsetting our business since
our first product shipped in 2012,"

Cedar says. "This has been familiar territory to us."
The idea of having a broader
impact was appealing. "We've been
describing our carbon neutrality to
our customers since 2015," Cedar
says. "But what we've found is we're
shouting through a thimble to
the market, because we're a small
company."
A well-known certification with
a label would turn that thimble
into a megaphone. "Look at USDA
organic or certified fair trade,"
Cedar says. "These are simplified

ways to speak credibly to a consumer so they don't have to make
their own judgement." The certification is a way to build trust.
Carbon offsetting has had its
critics all along, and Dering and
Cedar know it. Companies often
say they are more focused on reduction activities and that offsetting is simply "paying for your
sins." "I think that is really missing
the point," Cedar says. "I think
there are very few businesses today
who can, inside of the next two to
three years, actually reduce their
footprint in meaningful ways by,
say, more than 50 percent. Offsets
are just one of many tools." He
points out that offsets are something a brand can act on immediately and that the dollars that get
invested go directly into funding
projects that avoid or capture
greenhouse gas emissions from
the atmosphere-projects that are
happening right now.
Climate Neutral is choosing its
partners on the offsetting market
carefully. They're not allowing
offsetting through industrial gas
or large-scale hydroelectric projects, for example, but are allowing
offsetting via projects that support
the avoidance of deforestation, the
distribution of cookstoves and water
filters, landfill methane capture, and
wind power, among others.
"Our ethos is progress today is
better than perfection tomorrow,"
Cedar says. He and Dering hope
that companies of all sizes will get
behind Climate Neutral and that
customers will follow suit. "What's
so beautiful about Climate Neutral
is that it's something that brands
can take action on today."

SIGN UP AT THE SHOW
Climate Neutral is signing up participants at Booth 36119-UL.
Signing up is free. To calculate your footprint, you can hire a
third-party auditor, though for smaller companies, Climate Neutral
will help you calculate it yourself. Once you know your footprint,
you can create a plan to reduce it, then purchase offsets for the
rest through one of Climate Neutral's vetted offset marketplaces, including Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve, and several
other verified, internationally recognized registries. After you've
calculated your footprint, reduced it, and offset the remainder,
you'll be certified-and free to use the label on your storefront,
goods, and website. -J.F.

SUMMER MARKET 2019

The Daily - Day 1 - June 18, 2019

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