Postworks is the first online postal company to be carbon neutral

This article was originally published ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021. The statements and project details below refer to Postworks’ announcement at that time.

Postworks announced that it had become carbon neutral after working with an environmental consultant to produce a carbon footprint report for 2020 to 2021.

To offset the carbon calculated in the report, Postworks invested in a 100.5 megawatt wind power project.

Carbon neutrality had been on the Postworks agenda from the beginning. After all, there is no planet B.

The postal industry uses large amounts of paper and creates vehicle miles across its collection, processing and delivery networks.

Postworks wanted to approach those challenges differently and worked to complete its carbon neutrality project by World Post Day on 9 October 2021.

For many Postworks customers, physical post is a necessary part of running their organisation. Letters may contain important customer information, regulatory communications or documents that still need to arrive in print.

As more organisations considered the environmental impact of their suppliers, Postworks wanted to give procurement and sustainability teams another option when choosing how to manage business post.

Nikki Dingle, Postworks Business and Project Manager, said:

“It’s an amazing step forward and a long-awaited aim of the Postworks team to become carbon neutral. We believe that every person has a part to play in protecting the planet for future generations.”

The carbon footprint calculated for the project followed the Greenhouse Gas Protocol emission scopes, a widely used framework for greenhouse gas accounting.

The framework groups emissions into three scopes: direct emissions, indirect emissions within an organisation’s control and indirect emissions outside its direct control.

Using that approach helped Postworks understand the emissions connected to its operations before investing in the wind power project used for offsetting.

James Booker, Founder and CSO at Postworks, said:

“This is a project of particular importance to me. It’s not just a responsibility of businesses, it should be an expectation to take active steps to protect this planet. After all, it’s the only one we’ve got.”

Postworks Receive™, the company’s flexible digital inbound post service, had already given customers a way to manage incoming mail without passing physical paper around the office.

Becoming carbon neutral was another step in reducing the environmental impact connected to Postworks’ operations and services.

At the time of the announcement, Postworks also planned to develop a carbon footprint reporting tool that would show customers environmental data connected to their usage in real time.

The aim was to make it easier for organisations to manage important postal communications while choosing a supplier that took its environmental responsibilities seriously.

References: United Nations Climate Change Conference and United Nations World Post Day.