Carbon Neutral Report 21/22

The 2021 Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change (IPCC) is a wake-up call that the time for meaningful action on climate has nearly passed – but crucially, not yet. Urgent and immediate action
is needed across all levels of society and economies, from government legislation through to individual consumers and business. In the absence of any policy leadership from the Federal Government, action by the private sector – large and small business – will be crucial if we are to decarbonise the Australian economy in time.

Declaring carbon neutrality is a political act in itself, and the process has certainly been a learning curve for everyone involved at AJC into the politics of accreditation – from the varying definitions and scopes of what a Carbon Neutral business means, to how we get our consumption data through to choosing our carbon offsets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the usage data from the past financial year, given lockdowns had the effect of lowering our annual carbon consumption. For the sake of transparency, this report lists all our assumptions, which reporting periods are used for each emission scope, and all the sources of our calculations. This is so we as a practice can share and refine our process through feedback.

There’s a popular saying that ‘you can’t change what you don’t measure’, so we’re delighted to continue with assessing our consumables through the use of the Carbon Neutral calculator and its embedded carbon use data. The goal is obviously carbon neutrality, but also, achieving that with as few offsets as possible, so we will be reassessing our actions as we refine the measuring process. The next step is our Sustainability Action Plan, a comprehensive roadmap for transforming our process, practice and projects to as near a state of carbon  neutrality as possible.