#carbornneutral

In 2015, 193 countries committed to making the world more prosperous, resilient and sustainable by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A number of businesses took the same pledge and accepted the responsibility to do their part.

This includes MAX Burgers, IKEA and MEVO.

This summer MAX Burgers (Sweden) announced that all its burgers are now climate positive.

Any meal eaten at any one of its 130 restaurants across Europe and the Middle East will result in the removal of carbon dioxide from the air, reversing the negative impacts of climate change meal.

“To meet the two-degree climate goal set out in the Paris Agreement, the world needs to work harder at cutting emissions and start the work of clearing greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into the atmosphere. Just going carbon-neutral is not enough anymore. We know that we are part of the problem and together with our guests, we can now be part of the solution.” Richard Bergfors, CEO

How is Max Burgers creating a new climate positive menu?

By measuring their product emissions, including all emissions from the farmer’s land to the guest’s hand, in addition to the handling of waste generated from each meal.

By reducing their emissions and adding new approaches to continue making reductions in their process and products.

For example, since 2008, the company has only used electricity from wind power plants in Sweden.

In 2016, they quintupled their range of Green Family burgers, a collection of vegan and Lacto-ovo vegetarian burgers with a much smaller carbon footprint than a beef burger.

Sales of these Green-Family meals have increased by 900% over the last two years, causing MAX’s total climate impact to be reduced by 13 % per earned dollar over the same period.

By capturing the equivalent of at least 110 % of their remaining emissions by planting trees.

In New Zealand, Climate Positive carshare company Mevo charges its fleet of hybrid electric cars on New Zealand’s 80% renewable grid and offsets anything else its fleet emits by 120%. 

Meanwhile, IKEA recently committed to running its entire business off renewables by 2020, by 2030 it will be both Climate Positive and regenerative in terms of materials – in essence restoring more of the natural world than it uses for its own raw materials.

To help share their story and encourage other companies to create climate positive products, MAX created CLIPOP.org to help people find more climate positive products (CLIPOP).

Finally, I want to put an event on your calendar for June 3-6, 2019. Sustainable Brands is the premier organization for purpose-driven brands, Detroit will host their 2019 annual event.   

As businesses, we need to think about the impact we are having, not just on the bottom line, but on the footprint, we will leave on this world.