Carbon footprints are going negative. How can you get onboard?

Photo by: Husen Siraaj

It seems like every time we open our news tabs, we see another story about a company reducing its carbon footprint: Microsoft going carbon negative by 2030, Stripe announcing that they are now carbon neutral, Google going carbon free by 2030.

There’s a reason for all the carbon hype. Humans add 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. The current atmospheric content of CO2 is 410 parts per million (ppm). For perspective, we need to get below 350 ppm in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

So your carbon footprint is a big deal. But if all these big corporations are going carbon neutral or negative, we’re done right?

If only it were that simple.

In order to reach 350 ppm, it is going to take a systems revolution. Or perhaps a better word is “reinvention”. We have to reinvent the way we live and consume and create. That means that it’s not enough for a handful of large companies to start reducing their carbon footprint.

Every purchasing decision we make comes with a great deal of power. After all, it’s in service to our demands that those big companies are generating so many CO2 emissions to make the products we are choosing to buy.

The good news is that there are companies embracing the move to carbon negativity as an opportunity. Companies saying, “how can we go beyond doing no carbon harm, to doing carbon good?”

Today let’s look at a few companies that are manufacturing carbon negative products. Yep, that’s right, you can actually reduce your carbon footprint through not buying carbon heavy products, but also through buying carbon negative ones – and creating an essential demand in the free market for such products.

There is Interface making carbon negative floor tiles, and Newlight technologies making carbon negative plastic. There are amazing companies like Carbicrete tackling the problem of CO2 emitting construction materials by making carbon negative concrete.  

Today it’s worth focusing on one brand in particular because they are creating a product that we can all personally connect to because it exists in almost every home in the world – furniture. Pollima is not only a sustainable brand, but they are also a carbon negative one. They make beautiful furniture using byproduct waste, not only reducing their impact, but reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide in the process. They let plants do the heavy lifting of sequestering carbon, then they use the agricultural waste left over and trap the carbon inside before it has the chance to release into the atmosphere.

It seems like an almost too simple and obvious materials innovation – but that’s the genius behind it. Their way of making furniture out of waste instead of virgin wood, means that they are innovating on both ends of the spectrum – trapping carbon in waste while simultaneously reducing deforestation (a leading cause of CO2 emissions). They are a startup right now, but imagine what their potential is to scale. Imagine all the creative uses for their material.

The particularly exciting thing about Pollima is that they are a brand that brings the customer into the experience. They want you to have a say in how their company is constructed, how their products are made, packaged and disposed of. Joining their newsletter feels like joining their board of directors, where you get to have a say in where they operate, how they source materials and how they ship their final products. Having a choice and having a voice in the products you buy, is as important as the products themselves, because it means they are decentralizing the paradigm shift towards sustainable, carbon negative goods and putting not only the purchasing power, but the input power into consumer hands.

Your carbon negative footprint is within reach. Join the reinvention.