Easy Affordable Impact on climate change with Switch2Zero

A new approach promising to transform the way individuals and businesses can make a difference around climate change has today gone live.

Called Switch2Zero, it works by supporting people, SMBs, and everyone else looking to reduce the impact on the environment, by giving them access to a comprehensive range of tools and information, in one place.

More importantly, it tackles the key barriers that people currently have around starting their journey to net zero - removing complexity, reducing the costs, and demonstrating transparently around where every Pound, Dollar, Euro and more has been spent and the value it's delivered.

Easy: because individuals, families or businesses, can tailor their own spending to match the footprint of their current lifestyles or operations.

Affordable: subscriptions start at the price of just a couple of cups of coffee a month, and our tree-planting costs (which we do as a pay-it-forward approach for future generations rather than off-setting) are not only significantly cheaper than the market average (19c V $1), but are all done by community-based projects.

Impact: Every member gets their own personal dashboard where they can see exactly what impact every penny they spend is creating - CO2 offset, plastic removed etc. And, they will be able to share that data with friends and family to gamify their experience and encourage friendly competition!

S2Z brings together solutions designed to reduce climate and environmental impact, from tree-planting to off-setting to plastic removal, as well as the kind of critical information that helps people understand their footprint and how to counter it - from the latest research to tips on getting to net zero.

Founder and CEO Ian Ormerod said: “We founded S2Z really out of both a sense of frustration and yet optimism too.

“Frustration because making a difference at an individual level - whether as a consumer or a business - just feels like hard work. Where do you start, what should you do first, can I even afford this, and how do I know the multiple businesses I will have to deal with are actually going to make a real difference on my behalf.

“But optimism too - because you can see there are hundreds of millions of people out there who really want to reduce their impact on the environment - and if we can just fairly support all of those millions to do whatever they can - big or small - then collectively we will make a huge difference and change the future.”

Over the coming months, S2Z will evolve its platform into a one-stop shop that will combine multiple tools and solutions that comprehensively support everyone’s journey to net-zero.

At launch, the business will kick off with helping people on their first steps on the path - a starting point to taking action. For individuals or families, this starting point will include a subscription service that combines industry standard data together with detailed analysis from S2Z experts, to predict the likely footprint members are generating, and then combines off-setting and plastic waste removal to balance that impact. Tree-planting is also included - but only as a tool to benefit future generations.

For businesses, they can both off-set the current impact of their operations as well as support their own customers to tackle their impact - a S2Z subscription allows businesses to plant a tree with every transaction their customers make.

Ormerod added: “We’ve got a simple goal - to make it easy and affordable for everyone to reduce their impact on the environment - this should be something that everyone can do, without it costing them the earth. . .literally.

“History has shown time and again that profitable businesses drive innovation, and that’s what we are doing here with S2Z. But we will do it in a way that is focused less on the margin we make, and more on the positive change we help people deliver.”

He added that one such example of this commitment can be seen in the approach S2Z takes to off-setting and tree planting.

“Some companies will just buy the cheapest off-sets they can, at say $2 a ton, and will keep the margin they make. But we do things differently - instead we commit to a $5 a ton blended average - which enables us to deliver far more impact per dollar, or pound - or indeed any of the other 135+ currencies we support.”

S2Z’s model is to work with a diverse selection of projects, addressing multiple contributing factors to the climate crisis. It supports only the projects of partners with an exceptional track record and crystal clear integrity - including the UN Offset Projects, Gold Standard, Eden Reforestation Projects, and Plastic Bank.

Ormerod concluded: “We fully appreciate the complexities around what we do - for example, take our tree planting initiative. Unlike others, we don’t count tree-planting as off-setting because the difficulties in ensuring the tree planted can grow to maturity and deliver the promised impact. Instead we include this element as a means forward contribute to the future - it’s about trying to do the right thing.”

Find out more about how Switch2Zero can support you on your journey to net-zero at https://www.switch2zero.com/

Background

Switch2Zero was launched in December 2022 with the clear ambition of making it easy and affordable for people and businesses to reduce their environmental impact and get to net-zero carbon emissions.

S2Z is committed to transparency in its operations, being values-driven in its approach, and to only working with accredited off-setting, plastic reduction, and tree planting organisations.