method sees global warming as an extremely serious environmental problem, and
is taking steps to start finding solutions in our product designs, across our business,
and in our supply chain. method's carbon strategy is simple and straightforward:
- 1. Reduce first
- 2. Alternative energy second
- 3. Offset all the rest.
Our primary goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of our products and our company.
This includes all the energy we use to make our products and their ingredients,
the fuel used to deliver our products to stores, and even how each of us people
against dirty gets to work everyday. Some of the things we do to reduce our carbon
footprint include:
- Locating factories and warehouses strategically - this cuts down on transit distance
and reduces fuel consumption
- Formulating for "cold-blending" - many personal care and cleaning products need
to be heated while they are manufactured. We design ours to be blended without heating.
- Rail - rail uses 1/4 of the fuel, and therefore carbon, of trucking.
- Office space - all of our offices are located adjacent to public transportation,
reducing the footprint of People Against Dirty getting to work. Our headquarters
in San Francisco is a LEED certified facility.
- Local sourcing - from raw materials to office supplies to the food we bring in,
we prefer to source from around the corner, not around the globe
another forklift off the grid
The second aspect of our carbon strategy is alternative energy. Where energy is
needed, we want it to come from renewable sources. We have much left to do in this
area, but two unique programs we've been able to create are our
biodiesel shipping program and our solar powered lift (pictured above) trucks.
These programs reduce the carbon footprint of our operations beyond just being as
efficient as possible.
brubaker farms, mount joy, PA
Because we haven't been able to completely eliminate all emissions throughout our
business, and because we are committed to operating as close to climate-neutral
as we can, we offset the remainder of our manufacturing, office operations, and
employee commuting and travel emissions. We do this through investments in methane
digesters at three dairy farms in Pennsylvania (photos below). We've chosen methane
capture because we can measure exactly how much CO2 has been avoided, and it's completely
traceable.
Taking this a step further, we have created a unique carbon reduction incentive
that pays our suppliers to reduce their footprint. The structure is relatively simple:
we pay our offsets forward, then ask our suppliers to reduce. When they do, we write
them a check for offset we no longer need to buy because the emissions have been
avoided. It aligns the incentive of the investment we make in offsets with our primary
goal of reducing in the first place. For more details on the program, click here.
the old, uncovered manure lagoon, where methane is released by digestion
the newly covered manure lagoon, with methane captured and used to generate electricity
