Walking the talk: Our sustainability practices at Klima

This week we celebrate Earth Day, the one day out of the year that’s dedicated to supporting our environment and a more sustainable future. Here at Klima, this is our mission each and every day. 

Our entire business is built to help the planet — by making carbon neutrality as accessible as possible for as many people as we can. We’re well on our way. It’s been just a few months, since we launched, and the Klima community has already offset over 4,500 tons of CO2e! 

As exciting as that is, it’s not where our commitment ends. As a company, we’re committed to building sustainability and climate-friendly practices into our business, team, office, and policies across the board. Below, we're sharing our sustainability commitments in detail. We hope they can serve to inspire others. And of course we’re committed to keep learning and improving ourselves. Let’s dive in.

How we promote sustainability 

Our Mission: It all starts here. Our mission is to turn personal carbon neutrality into a mass movement by making it radically easy for anyone to offset and reduce their carbon footprint. Sustainability is at the core of our purpose. 

Our Constitution: Sustainability is built into our very constitution. All shareholders agreed in our articles of association that the business purpose of Klima is to create a significant impact on general welfare and the environment.

Our Practice: 

• Our directors pledge to account for the impact of our actions on all stakeholders, including employees, users, and most crucially, the environment.

• Our procurement prioritizes fair trade, organic, regional, low-waste, and upcycling principles wherever possible. 

• Our office is run on 100% renewable energy and we’ve moved all data hosting to centers powered by renewable energy where possible.

• We account for and have offset all of our greenhouse gas emissions since incorporation.

Our team: 

• We offset the personal carbon footprints of our entire workforce. When you join Klima, you become carbon neutral from day one. 

• We have a trains-over-planes policy with real incentives. Klima employees receive an extra day of vacation where train travel is used in place of plane travel. 

• We take it to the streets: Employees get time off to participate in climate protests, and we collectively participate in global climate strikes whenever possible.

• We promote green commuting: Employees get a free bike subscription and free public transport.

• We educate ourselves as we go with weekly all-hands meetings that include climate news roundups to the whole company. 

Our standards:

• As an offsetting company, we pride ourselves on selecting the highest quality certified carbon credits out there. You can read more about how we choose projects here.

• All our climate projects rank among the most effective climate solutions as identified by Project Drawdown.

• All of our carbon credits are verified by the highest international standards for quality carbon offsetting such as the Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard. 

• All of our projects promote additional benefits under the UN Sustainable Development Goals framework, ranging from poverty alleviation, to furthering biodiversity, to women’s empowerment.

Our goals for sustainability in 2021

We’re proud of how our company supports climate-healthy practices and activities, but we know this work is ongoing — and we won’t ever stop pushing for more. That’s why we’ve already outlined our goals to make sure we end this year in an even greener and cleaner place than where we started. 

We’ll double down on environmental accountability and transparency in 2021 by:

• Publishing proof of all our carbon offsets on a public ledger.

• Sending individual monthly offset reports to each Klima member.

• Building tools to help each Klima member understand their carbon footprint and reduction potential on a more granular and actionable level.

• Making individual and collective achievements of Klima members more visible.

• Continuing to seek opportunities to reduce our emissions further.

• Achieving B-Corp certification.

• Hosting bi-annual team events (when safe) contributing to community climate action.

• Launching a series of Klima guides, with deep-dives detailing how we all can reduce carbon dioxide effectively across different aspects of our daily lives.

Of course, this is just the beginning. As we grow our business, our community, and our staff, we’ll continue to evolve our sustainability practice at Klima. At the end of the day, we’re dedicated to building a sustainable workplace, shrinking our own carbon emissions, and promoting green practices whenever possible — all while building a global carbon neutral movement. 

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, we’re hiring. Check out our jobs page for more info.