The importance of caring for our natural environment is growing every day. With natural disasters on the increase, temperatures rising across the globe, and ecosystems changing rapidly, it is now hard to deny the existence of climate change and humanity’s role in causing that due to our love of carbon-intensive activities. It is not just a threat to individuals in remote places on earth, but also to our own communities and economies.
And we do not have long to act.
As an organisation, we care deeply about the communities we work within, and the natural environment surrounding us all. Not only is it an existential threat to humanity, it is an existential threat to our economy as well.
You cannot have an economy on a dead planet. It is that simple.
Following on from that, it’s clear that every business must make being carbon-neutral and low-waste an imperative. There is no other workable alternative, no matter however difficult the process will be.
Our Carbon Commitment
From today, Loop Foundry will begin recording our carbon intensity and waste usage. Our goal is to become certified as carbon-neutral by the Australian government by June 2024 (i.e., within five years). In addition, we aim to reduce the amount of waste produced by Loop Foundry that is destined for landfill to zero within that same five years.
We will be reducing our carbon emissions on a per dollar of profit basis (the most sensible way of calculating improvement in a growing business) by:
- Decreasing non-essential travel and substituting more efficient means of transport;
- Choosing suppliers with lower environmental footprints (ideally that are carbon neutral themselves), or those with calculated and published environmental figures;
- Reducing our usage of products with environmentally-damaging life cycles;
- and making sure all waste (especially electronic waste such as old computers) is properly recycled rather than going to landfill.
We will then be using certified carbon credits to bring our net carbon footprint to zero.
In one sense these are ambitious goals for a small business, as carbon accounting requires a lot of time spent on administration, and will only become harder as we grow. However, in another sense these goals are only just ambitious enough – the planet cannot sustain forever our economy generating the destruction it does.
Finally, we call on both our suppliers and our clients to match our commitments. It’s a hard road, but it’s going to be much easier if we’re all on board.