Climate Neutral: Austin Builds a Carbon Crunching Calculator

Counting Carbon is hard on a good day, making it easy for companies and simple for consumers is harder.

September 1, 2020

Climate Neutral

Climate Neutral is the standard earned by companies that offset and reduce all of their greenhouse gas emissions. The label helps consumers choose brands with zero net carbon emissions.

Contributors:

Lex Kiefhaber

Two main issues plague consumers looking to shop sustainably: finding the startups (who generally don't have massive marketing budgets to find you) that are making sustainable products, and secondly, trusting that those products are actually doing good for the planet, not just pretending to. 

That's where Climate Neutral comes in. They have created software tool (affectionately dubbed the "Triple C" by us, and the inspiration for the show's title) that allows companies to quickly and rigorously calculate the climate the carbon footprint of the products they produce. Once the company has that number locked down, they then commit to offsetting their carbon impact and take further steps to reduce their impact on the planet in the future. For these efforts, they get the certified "Climate Neutral" badge of approval. 

The trick will be, and what CEO Austin Whitman and I get into, how do we get consumers to care? Once the carbon is counted, we still need to build the bridge from companies doing good to earning trust with the consumer base and convincing them to focus their wallets on supporting sustainable products. 

Listen in as we talk about the how behind the calculator, the why that got them here, and the where- as in where are the consumers and how can we get them to change their behavior. 

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