Catalyzing Employee-driven Impact
Co-founders and longtime friends Jack Bruner, Jeff Packer and Roee Eidan built a membership-based platform that motivates employees to take action on sustainability. supplied
As the world races towards a low-emissions future, businesses are struggling to deliver on their ambitious net-zero targets. A Toronto-based company, Carbon Neutral Club, is helping organizations achieve their climate commitments by mobilizing the most powerful but often ignored force for climate action: their employees.
“We’re seeing billions of dollars being invested in net-zero plans, but in many organizations there’s a total disconnect between the operational change goals and the value shifts needed to support them,” says Jack Bruner, one of the three co-founders of the Carbon Neutral Club, which launched two years ago. “Carbon Neutral Club provides companies with the tools to achieve their sustainability targets by mobilizing a climate movement within their four walls.”
Co-founders and longtime friends Jack Bruner, Jeff Packer and Roee Eidan built a membership-based platform that motivates and rewards employees for taking actions that contribute to their company’s goals for Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, as well as their personal category emissions that are not directly produced by the organization.
“Equipping employees with accessible educational resources is key to empowering them to take effective climate action,” says Mr. Bruner. Carbon Neutral Club does this by providing tools for calculating personal and work-related emissions, by offering personalized insights, tips and challenges for reducing carbon-emitting activities, and by tracking progress.
For instance, employees who drive to work might be incentivized to work from home more often, take public transit or cycle, while department leaders could be rewarded for rethinking their team’s practices and prioritizing videoconferencing.
“Based on an employee’s footprint, we offer a personalized journey of reduction and team-based actionable challenges to change habits in and outside of work,” says Mr. Bruner. “Our educational content uses plain language and helps employees at all levels of climate awareness understand the problem space and identify tactical reduction opportunities.”
To ensure employees remain committed to achieving their individual and team-wide climate objectives, Carbon Neutral Club links incentives to actions. Depending on the employer, these incentives could take various forms, such as bonuses, vacation days, trees planted, discounts with their 100+ sustainable brand partners or other types of recognition.
To mitigate the impact of emission-generating activities that can’t be avoided, Carbon Neutral Club offers employees the opportunity to invest in high-quality carbon offsets through science-backed climate projects. For instance, one portfolio project, CarbonCure Technologies, injects captured carbon dioxide into cement to trap emissions from being released into the atmosphere.
To date, thousands of employees from hundreds of organizations across Canada and the United States use Carbon Neutral Club. “The community is growing rapidly,” says Mr. Bruner, "as more companies and employees realize that successful and lasting climate action must happen from the bottom up.
“Just because a net-zero strategy exists doesn’t mean it will work – organizations need to have a plan that will empower employees to understand and deliver on the strategy,” he says. “When you boil it down, it’s all about aligning corporate climate goals with employees’ incentives and experience – and that’s exactly what we’re doing at Carbon Neutral Club.”
To view this report on The Globe's website, visit globeandmail.com
To view the full report as it appeared in The Globe's print edition: Canada’s Clean50