Amid the climate crisis, companies stand to gain both in business and relations by working toward climate neutrality. Despite this, numerous articles indicate that industry is a primary saboteur of our environment.

We Are Neutral aims to end this pattern through its innovative business support strategies, which assist companies with reducing and neutralizing their emissions. Founded in 2007 by Jacob Cravey, We Are Neutral is an environmental 501(c)(3) nonprofit that helps businesses and individuals understand, track, reduce and offset their comprehensive environmental footprints. With this assistance, clients can take responsibility for their environmental impact.

In 2012, Anna Sampson began serving as the President and Director of the organization. With a background in sustainable architecture, she pivoted toward climate action after recognizing a greater need. She believes that while many businesses want to do right by the environment, few know where to start.

“As architects, using math in so much of our designs, we thought of [We Are Neutral] with the same approach: where we use math to determine where businesses should start,” Anna explained. “We can calculate their comprehensive environmental footprint and identify the areas that contribute the most, which can help us to help them get started… We preach that it’s not too big and not too late, but you definitely need to get started.”

One of We Are Neutral’s predominant tasks is consulting businesses to help them determine their real operational footprint. From there, the nonprofit shares the calculated carbon footprint and offers opportunities for each business to reduce and offset their emissions. Their well-rounded measures aim to encompass all of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Climate First Bank has been partnered with We Are Neutral since its first day of operation. Collaboratively, we’ve been able to target all of our scope 1 and 2 emissions and much of our scope 3 emissions, offsetting 100% with projects that are beneficial to the planet.

“Every single partnership starts with a call with me,” Anna said. “While there are a lot of different software out there to help you calculate your footprint, we found that nothing is really one size fits all. So, we really believe in the face-to-face approach. We work with our partners year-round. We think that our expertise is one that can spare businesses years of googling and picking their brains about what they need to be doing.”

Whereas many organizations use the term “carbon-neutral” to describe businesses offsetting their emissions, We Are Neutral believes it is critical to touch on each SDG. They prefer the term “environmentally neutral” or “climate neutral” to encapsulate the need to reduce all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, and to conserve food and water while reducing waste.  

Part of the SDGs is a prudent focus on the human side of environmental development. In accordance with this, We Are Neutral diligently provides environmental education to the public. They empower individuals by helping the public understand what daily actions they can take to reduce their footprint. As advocates for climate neutrality, they have focused on climate change victim relief in recent years, providing aid to those who suffered loss due to environmental conditions.

“It’s about more than just greenhouse gases. It is about people, and humanity, and poverty, and inequalities. We really try to approach all the work we do while considering all the SDGs, not just emissions,” Anna said. “That’s part of the climate change victim relief- this negatively impacts humanity and that needs to be a part of our mission as well.”

In less than 20 years of operation, they have assisted thousands of businesses and events in understanding their comprehensive carbon footprint. Through reorganization strategies, they have helped to increase the quality of environmental projects and have aided companies in neutralizing their impact. In total, they have spared the atmosphere 85,100 metric tons of pollution, which is equivalent to 1.5 million trees absorbing pollution. They believe that through the tools and strategies they provide, businesses can create a difference. Many of the problems in the industry stem from a lack of knowledge.

“And I think it’s the same for individuals. If you’re in the grocery store comparing two brands of peanut butter and one is so much better for the environment, and the other is terrible for the environment, I think almost everybody would pick the one that is better for the environment if they are the same price,” Anna said. “But we just don’t have labels like that. It’s not common knowledge to understand what’s worse and what’s better, so it’s leaving people in a place where they are just super anxious about climate change and have no idea what to do.”

We Are Neutral seeks to ease this anxiety by creating resources that lead individuals and businesses toward making simple changes that contribute to the goal. Reaching about a million people each year, their environmental education programs consist of actions people can incorporate into everyday life. Through information published on their website and social media, We Are Neutral envisions a society where consumers can make decisions that help reduce our environmental crisis.

Working toward this goal, they’ve recently published an online lifestyle carbon footprint calculator developed by the University of California Berkeley. With this tool, individuals can take the same action in understanding, reducing, and offsetting their environmental impact, effectively expanding We Are Neutral’s impact from beyond business to the consumer. By using this tool, individuals can understand their footprint and donate to create the exact amount of environmental good that is needed to offset their footprint.

“I’m really excited to roll this out because we are very skeptical of most online calculators since we aren’t sure how the back end is doing their math and it’s trusting the user to input data,” Anna explained. “But we are so absolutely excited about and proud of this calculator. It includes your utility consumption, your travel, your diet, and your purchases. It tells you ways you can reduce your footprint, and then it gives you an opportunity to donate to us [We Are Neutral] so we can plant enough trees to compensate for the footprint you have.”

With the goal of gaining 200 users in the next year, the calculator will officially begin promotion starting in December 2024, but it is already fully developed and available to use. It is well-designed and easy to navigate, creating an effortless user experience.

To help restore balance to the planet, Climate First Bank encourages readers to visit We Are Neutral’s website and start using this new evaluation tool today. As a community, we can only improve what we can measure, so by measuring your footprint; you can offset your own negative impact by making smarter purchasing choices, donating to environmental initiatives, and banking like tomorrow depends on it.

To learn more about incorporating sustainability into your business model, find We Are Neutral on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.