Is Plenish Certified Carbon Negative and what does it mean?

We know claims can often be confusing so let’s start with some definitions.

Carbon neutrality is when a business achieves net zero carbon dioxide emissions by balancing emissions with carbon removals (i.e. carbon offsetting). 

Climate-positive (or carbon negative) means going beyond achieving net zero carbon emissions by removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than is being emitted by the business activity. 

Plenish was the first UK climate positive plant-based drinks brand to become a participant in the UN Climate Neutral Now Initiative which was launched in 2015 following the Paris Agreement on climate change.

To achieve this, we chose to work with a partner called One Carbon World to obtain a certificate of retirement of certified emissions reductions from the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism. Through the same partnership, we also obtained a certificate of retirement of voluntary emission reductions from the La Pitanga forest plantation on degraded grasslands project in Uruguay. We last renewed these certificates in December 2022.

We chose to take this route because we wanted to take urgent climate action while continuing to implement effective strategies and activities to reduce our own emissions.

Since then, we have been acquired by Britvic and together we continuously review our procurement and supply chain methods to ensure that we are pushing ourselves to achieve greater sustainability in our business practices. Find out more about our parent company’s sustainability efforts.

A last word on carbon negative versus climate positive. We acknowledge that, every year, we collectively acquire more knowledge on climate change and the actions needed to stop it or even reverse it. This is why the way we talk about our actions evolves. With this in mind, we have decided to remove ‘Certified Carbon Negative’ from our packaging and marketing materials until we’re more confident on how to communicate our actions. Bear with us as we scan the world wide web and use up existing packaging (we wouldn’t want to create unnecessary waste).