Sweep’s carbon footprint: Learnings and actions for 2022

Talk the talk, walk the walk: We’re proud to share our 2021 carbon footprint, takeaways, and climate actions for the year.

Today, only 5% of French companies are required to report their carbon footprints by law. To meet global net-zero targets, every company needs to deal with their emissions. 

That’s why we joined Climate Act. Created by Antoine Msika, the initiative gathers 250+ French companies that measure, reduce, and publicly communicate their climate impact. 

Every day, we help large companies (each responsible for 30-50 MtCO2e of carbon emissions per year!) do just that. 

But our climate journey looks different. Our carbon footprint’s quite small now and will grow as we scale our team and operations across the world. To keep building with impact, we need to look into our emissions from year 1 to best anticipate emission increases. 

Today, we’re proud to share our 2021 carbon footprint, takeaways, and climate actions for the coming year. 

1. Our carbon footprint

2021 was our first full year measuring our carbon footprint. We identified and mapped all the stakeholders involved – from our remote members across the world to our PR agency in the US. 

Here’s the full picture:

2. What we learned

This first footprint is a starting point for more precise measurements and actions moving forward. Our top 3 takeaways are: 

👀 Watch out for our scope 3: 94% of our footprint comes from indirect emissions, including service providers, employees’ commuting, and energy consumption. As we’re a SaaS company and have a small remote team, it’s not surprising. But it’s something to keep in mind when we build our business strategy. 

🙌 Carbon is a collective effort: We collected a total of 547 data points – a significant number given our company’s size and industry. That’s the result of our team’s efforts; every month, we track our individual emissions in Sweep.

🔎 Use the right emission factor: Emissions factors are used to calculate the emissions of a business activity. In addition to using independent databases, our carbon team created new emission factors, such as remote working, to get a more precise footprint. 

3. What's next

As part of Climate Act, we submitted these 3 actions to monitor and temper our emissions in 2022: 

🔻 Get our partners to track and reduce their footprints: We offer them free access to our platform so they can manage their emissions and reduce our collective impact on the planet.

🌎 Build a 'low-carbon' team culture: We give our team access to weekly carbon webinars, a library of climate resources, and tools like TravelPerk, which helps pick carbon and cost-effective travel options. 

♻️ Buy refurbished office equipment: It’s 11% of our footprint, but our team expansion plan means it’s likely to increase. We’ll prioritize buying second-hand work equipment and participate in the circular economy. 

As you can see, this first carbon footprint isn’t perfect. But we now have an overview to back our 2022 goals, look for missing data, and plan ahead for reduction initiatives as we grow our company. 

That’s why it’s important to measure and report your climate journey. To bring more transparency and accountability to the world of carbon. Learn and improve over time. And inspire others to do the same. 

Start now