We answer your questions

• Why choose Ecologi?

  When it comes to putting money into climate solutions, the service that helps you with this needs to be exceptional.

  On what we choose to do today, almost all life on Earth will feel the effects of this for millennia to come. This fact is deep in our DNA, and it guides everything we do as a social enterprise.

  We believe we have the values, and heart, to be trusted to enable your business to make the biggest, most meaningful impact you can have on securing a prosperous planet.

  The founding team were the original cynical customers of our own service: We needed everything to be radically transparent; to basically cost as much as it would be if you paid the project developer yourself; to support projects that are certified to the highest available standards; and to be able to demonstrate to the world your impact far beyond just a PDF certificate (example profile).

  We know trust is a big factor in your decision, please check out our reviews, and if you have any concerns reach out to us.

• What is a Climate Positive Workforce?

  A Climate Positive Workforce is a team that gives back to our planet. Our monthly subscription enables all employees in your organisation to mitigate their carbon footprint, as well as planting trees.

  This includes all of their travel, energy use, food & hobbies that occur inside or outside of the business. It’s calculated from the average footprint in each country, with a generous margin of error on top to ensure you’re covered.

  It’s a staff perk, its great eco recognition on your path to Net Zero, and it’s a source of climate hope.
  Oh, and it only takes a few minutes to set up 🍃

• How are businesses using Ecologi?

  One size never fits all, so we have a suite of solutions for our businesses.

  A monthly Climate Positive Workforce subscription is our most popular approach. It’s a fast, affordable, and impactful leap on the sustainability ladder. Lucy & Yak were one of our first Climate Positive Workforces.

  Our marketplace is where businesses can design their impact around their needs. Nokia plants trees for each phone sale, while Capgemini plants them for events. EET offsets each of their deliveries, while Tribepad are working towards offsetting their entire history of business emissions. These contributions can be manual (from your profile) or automatic. If you’d like to have an account without a subscription, just go here. 

  Organizations, and individuals, can have an outsized impact by simply encouraging others to get involved. Businesses like Alba and Ethique are using their network to amplify the message of collective action, and look at all their sparkly (referral) trees! This networking effect is our biggest opportunity to halt climate change, and we hope you join us in spreading the word 📣.

• Can I offset my company's entire carbon footprint?

  Traditionally, the answer to this would be that you could do this if you had a significant amount of time and money to work towards achieving. Carbon footprinting a business can get complicated, quickly.

  Over the last two years, Ecologi has been developing software to remove these hurdles to allow you to understand your carbon footprint in near real-time based on your financial transactions. If you’d like to be involved in our Beta programme, please head here.

• Can I offset my company's emissions by planting trees?

  At Ecologi, we fund two different types of climate action: one is the planting of trees, and the other is support a wide range of climate solutions sold as carbon offsets.

  Newly planted trees that you fund are years away from being the efficient carbon storage and wildlife sanctuaries that are destined for them. Planting a tree is investing in our future, and if it’s a mangrove tree (which is a great choice for climate action), then it’s only a decade away from doing its job. Consequently, you cannot offset any footprints from newly planted trees, but it is among the bests thing you can do for climate and biodiversity.

  Certified carbon offsets enable you to trade the unavoidable emissions from your business with a climate project that has been measured to make carbon reductions elsewhere in the world. For example, a wind farm that generates clean energy for the electricity grid can demonstrate it has avoided carbon emissions. This action can generate a carbon offset to sell and exchange to you to offset your own footprint. The key takeaway here is that only carbon offsets have proven that their emission reduction has already happened in the past.

• Can I offset my company's entire carbon footprint?

  Traditionally, the answer to this would be that you could do this if you had a significant amount of time and money to work towards achieving. Carbon footprinting a business can get complicated, quickly.

  Over the last two years, Ecologi have been developing software to remove these hurdles to allow you to understand your carbon footprint in near real-time based on your financial transactions. If you’d like to be involved in our Beta programme, please head here for more information.

• How can you prove the impact?

  In our drive to be transparent about the climate solutions we fund, we publish the certificates for all of the carbon credits (verified tonnes of carbon emissions reduced) that we buy, and also the receipts from our purchases of tree planting services from our tree-planting partners. You can view these here.

  We only fund carbon offset projects which meet the highest verification standards, such as Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard. In addition, we aim to fund offset projects which meet other important sustainability and development standards like CCBS and SDVista – which show how the offset projects (as well as meeting a recognised carbon standard) also contribute positive impacts to the local communities, and to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

  We only work with tree-planting partners who plant trees responsibly. In addition, our partners are regularly audited by third parties, and publish internal reports for us with updates and data from our planting sites. Check out this annual audit for our Madagascan tree planting project for an audit example. You can read more on responsible reforestation here.

• How much of the money goes to climate action?

  As much as we possibly can, but still keep enough for this programme to sustain itself. We commit to at least 77.5% to be spent on climate action (includes any associated fees like carbon offset membership and transaction costs). What we do with the 22.5%: Our base fee is 15% to both run the platform and attract new customers, then we reserve 10% for the overheads of business-specific features, services and account management.

  When purchasing trees or carbon offsets by themselves, over 85% will go towards the climate solution.

  Absolute transparency is a key value of ours, you’ll see our financial reports every quarter.

• Is this tax deductible?

  It is likely that any business undertaking this expenditure will obtain a business benefit in the promotion of the business, and therefore it is likely to be a tax deductible expense for most trading businesses.

  We recommend you seek financial advice if uncertain.