How did Mainer Associates become a Climate Positive Business?

Jan 4

Written By Paul Malone

As a Sustainability Consultancy, our role is to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry. We do this every day for our clients - but we must not forget about our own impact. Mainer have been using Earthly to report and offset our carbon produced. Keep reading to learn how it was done...

Written by

Chris Pimm & Alice Greville

Graduate Sustainability Consultants

To contact please email:

chris.pimm@mainer.co.uk or alice.greville@mainer.co.uk

How does Mainer measure the amount of carbon it produces?

Here at Mainer, we take our impact on the planet seriously - but how can we ensure that our own business practices are sustainable?

To help reduce our impact - and aid our transition to a net zero future - we needed help from a company that could help to identify the biggest carbon sinks. This company was Earthly.

Earthly measures a company’s impact on the environment using a Business Emission Report, and then reduces the impact using handpicked comprehensive and transparent nature-based solutions, which help to improve livelihoods and restore biodiversity.

The role of small businesses like ours is critical in the fight against climate change. It has been reported that SMEs have the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint by a massive 80 MtCO2e, this is especially important as the UK has 6 million small businesses, which makes up 99% of the UK’s enterprises and generate £2.2 trillion of revenue to the economy.

Isn’t this just offsetting carbon with a different name?

No. Earthly are fully verified, with backing from science to monitor a company’s carbon impact and provide solutions, which not only target carbon impact but also consider the effect on people and biodiversity. As a result, they promote moving away from solely focussing on offsetting and instead aim to educate businesses and invest in nature-based solutions at the same time to remove carbon, not just emissions.

A process of measurement as easy as Scope 1-2-3

The process of measuring our impact looks at Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

Scope 1 emissions are the greenhouse gases released directly from the business, such as fuel use scope.
Scope 2 emissions are emissions from the energy purchased by an organisation, such as that of electricity.
Scope 3 includes indirect emissions up and down the value chain such as waste management.

The process started via correspondence with a Carbon Analyst at Earthly. We were asked if we wanted to calculate out carbon output as we have the previous year, which we could then offset - making us a net zero carbon organisation.

We were then given a spreadsheet to fill in, which we could use to calculate our carbon usage over the past year. We started by filling in some basic information, such as the building area, office space area, number of employees and working days. We then inputted three scopes of emissions as outlined by Earthly: Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3.

So, how did Mainer do?

Scope 1

A minimal carbon output of 0.31 t CO₂e which came from the natural gas heating of the building on an average year.

Scope 2
Mainer only produced 0.13 t CO₂e of Scope 2 emissions, which came from the production of electricity for the office and home offices.

(This value is based on UK averages of emissions per m2 of office area that the business uses.)

Scope 3

This is where most of our carbon emissions originated from. As you can see from the two charts above it was 22.83 t CO₂e. This section was split up into two sections: ‘Transportation’ and ‘other’.

‘Transportation’ specified the business travel and hotel stays, which were not applicable to Mainer Associates as there was no business trips required in 2021. However, out of the four employees that were commuting, 1 used an electric car, 1 used a hybrid and 2 used petrol cars. The carbon emissions released from the commuting of the petrol and hybrid cars contribute to the business’s carbon output.

The ‘other’ section specified the procurement of services, such as room rent, materials such as furniture, and other large purchases such as laptops. For this section we inputted out invoices from 2021 to calculate the money spent on these purchases in order to calculate the carbon emissions from the procurement of these products.

Mainers’ total carbon emissions were: 23.28 t CO₂e.

Now that we know our carbon dioxide emissions, we can now offset this amount to become net zero carbon.

Going beyond just being a Carbon Neutral Business

Earthly have a selection of projects that are specialised to producing carbon. These projects are all over the globe, giving vulnerable areas the investment needed to protect themselves and to ensure that no more carbon into the atmosphere.

To become a climate positive business, Mainer will be investing 110% of our carbon output. This has been rounded up to a total of 26 t CO₂e, which will be offset.

Mainer will be investing in the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Peatland Protection Project. Without this investment, which is needed to protect this rare peatland ecosystem, the land would have been turned into palm oil estates, which produce massive amounts of carbon.

This project is predicted to save approximately 3.53 million tonnes of carbon emissions every year! Peatland also houses rare species that are not found anywhere else in the world, and contribute to reducing floods, droughts, and wildfires.

To talk to Mainer Associates about any of the issues raised in the article,
please feel free to get in touch here