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Underwired becomes Pure Trust Carbon Offset Partner
7th March, 2007
Underwired has become a Pure Carbon Offset Partner, which carries with it a commitment to audit its emissions.
Underwired has long had an ethical policy covering business practices, which has now been extended. The agency recently took the decision to create a specific role within the organisation with responsibility for recycling, reducing the agency's carbon footprint to zero, and creating a roster of carbon-neutral suppliers including courier firms, stationery and related supplies.
Pure: the Clean Planet Trust (registered charity 1112249) is now the UK's leading carbon offset scheme.
Underwired's managing partner Felix Velarde commented "We chose Pure because of its straightforward policy of buying and retiring Kyoto-compliant credits directly from the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism or the European Union Emissions Trading scheme, rather than running a scheme itself."
Some schemes have come under fire because their long-term benefit has been superseded by government actions or overshadowed by local politics or actions by unrelated charities that mitigate the scheme's effects. And doubt has been cast over the efficacy of some tree planting schemes, which can have a delay of between 40 and 100 years before they become effective.
Felix continues: "The UN pool is a capped set of Carbon Credits that constitutes the whole legal carbon footprint of participating nations, so by buying credits we are actively participating both in offsetting the carbon footprint we create and in reducing the overall pool of credits available to polluters. In the meantime we are also actively seeking to reduce our own footprint through a range of internal policies as well as externalised actions like supplier vetting and the use of recycled or carbon-neutral products."