Innovation in Carbon Offset
By Dr Arvind Kumar
Piqqo, LLC, a UK-based carbon offset company brings a unique approach to the voluntary carbon market, enabling individual involvement with carbon offset projects and providing a direct connection between companies and customers interested in going green. Founded in 2009 by Vertis Environmental Finance, the most experienced emissions trading finance house in Central Europe, Piqqo provides transactional infrastructure and content to make voluntary carbon offsetting easy and credible for retailers and their consumers. Piqqo calculates the carbon footprints of clients’ products using the PAS2050 guidelines (the internationally recognized standard developed by The Carbon Trust). Their footprints include the whole lifecycle of a product, from materials and manufacturing to disposal and recycling.
Piqqo’s clients purchase carbon credits from an array of carbon offset projects that have been verified to high standards and carry a range of social and environmental benefits. They then receive the Piqqo Label for their products, which assures consumers that the product is carbon neutral and provides them with details about the specific project their purchase supports. Each Label features a unique serial code that corresponds to a specific project – ranging from habitat restoration in Malaysia to sustainable forest management in Peru. Consumers can enter the code on Piqqo’s website, gaining access to a wealth of information about the project as well as general educational materials regarding climate change. In addition to engaging the consumer directly in companies’ sustainable practices, Piqqo’s labeling strategy offers an unprecedented level of credibility and transparency in the complex world of carbon offsetting.
