Outdoor Retailer - March 2021 - 16

IDEAS / The Weekly Chat

Climate Neutral CEO Austin Whitman talks about how the
nonprofit helps brands in all industries measure, offset, and
reduce the carbon it takes to make their products-and how
its mission continues to evolve. By Doug Schnitzspahn
What does Climate Neutral do?
We're a nonprofit organization set up specifically to create a trusted consumer standard
for carbon neutrality. We're an independent
nonprofit, not a consulting firm, and we don't
sell carbon offsets. We're just trying to establish trust and transparency. By creating a
standard, we speak the language of consumers, and that's really important because the
landscape of carbon neutrality pledges and
plans is really dispersed-so consumers need
a recognizable standard. You don't get Climate
Neutral Certified unless you measure all of
your emissions, reduce or offset all of those
emissions, and make plans to reduce those
emissions in the future. And it's a process that
you are required to repeat annually.
How has Climate Neutral evolved since you
launched at the Outdoor Retailer Summer
Show in 2019?
The biggest thing is the excitement of getting
close to critical mass. We have expanded from
18 brands to 300 and continue to grow. REI
joined this last year. That was a huge moment
for us, but we are growing with brands from
beyond the outdoor industry. We're excited
about the snowball effect that's happening
within certain market categories-one we
are seeing right now is kombucha companies.
There's a FOMO developing as you see climate neutrality become a standard for business. You are hearing it on the news. Being
carbon neutral is becoming how businesses
need to operate.
We're also excited to be at this intersection of increasing market demand to achieve
climate neutrality and a really poor existing
solution set to meet that demand. There's a
need for a trusted, independent advisor. This
is something we can capitalize on to take more

16 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ March 2021

Austin
Whitman

action. We also see a big opportunity to play a
role in shaping the future expectations of the
voluntary carbon offset market. Coming up
with better standards in that market is really
important. We think the voluntary offset market tends to get an unfairly bad rap, but there
are still many ways to improve it. And because
we're not tied to any project, or any brokerage,
we stand on a sort of middle ground. There's
this view that voluntary markets should die,
they don't belong. And then there's another

How do you help your brands?
Our goal is to be able to go to people and say,
" You don't need to figure everything out on day
one. " All you need to do is start by estimating
your carbon emissions. We have both people
and software that's going to help do that. And
when you do, we have the tools to communicate to your senior management what the opportunities are for your company to decrease
carbon emissions. You will also have the tools
to understand the different parts of your
supply chain that are contributing the large
chunks of your emissions.
Does helping companies offset their emission actually help them operate more effectively in other areas?
The hardest part of carbon footprinting is
collecting data on company operations. It
has been amazing to find out just how little
transparency there is in a company's supply
chain-and, by extension, how little transparency there is around specific material choices
and the availability of alternatives. Knowing
this is important to running a good business.
Sending people on the errand of figuring out
what their utility bills were for last year or
figuring out what percentage of their total material purchases are recyclable or how much
emissions are coming from one factory manufacturing partner compared to cleaner alternatives can really be helpful. O.R.

-Want to know even more? Austin
Whitman will join Outdoor Retailer
Editor-in-Chief Doug Schnitzspahn for
the Winter Online education session
Net Zero Now: Creating Standards and
Accelerating the Shift to a Decarbonized
World to discuss how outdoor brands are
pushing the principles of transparency, innovation, and modeling what a carbon-free
market could look like. Log on to Winter
Online or visit outdoorretailer.com to join
the conversation on March 18, 9 a.m. PDT.

Courtesy Climate Neutral

Neutral Good

view that nothing else works. And so I think
we're sort of in this spot where we are both
skeptical and hopeful for the market. Two
years ago, that wasn't a part of our story.

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nzENGEYPTF6RDivGl8diPA https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nzENGEYPTF6RDivGl8diPA https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nzENGEYPTF6RDivGl8diPA http:// https://outdoorretailer.com/events-education/education/

Outdoor Retailer - March 2021

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