Carbon Credit Investments 2024

Goodee is certified carbon neutral, meaning, for every ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) we emit into the atmosphere, we fund projects that remove or prevent an equivalent amount of CO2 elsewhere. This careful balance allows us to neutralize our carbon footprint, ensuring that our business activities do not contribute to the growing problem of climate change. 

This year, we divided our credits between two different credit providers: The Zambia Improved Cookstoves Project and Tradewater’s US Refrigerant Destruction Project. Read below to learn more about these projects. 

Zambia Improved Cookstoves Project

In all of Africa, 700 million people rely on wood or charcoal fuel for cooking, a practice that is not only inefficient but also poses a significant threat to people's health and the environment.

Using wood fuel as the primary source of energy for cooking can indeed have several negative consequences:

• Indoor Air Pollution: Burning wood releases a range of harmful pollutants, creating indoor air pollution that can have serious health effects, especially in poorly ventilated homes. 
• Carbon Emissions: Burning wood releases carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
• Deforestation and Habitat Destruction
• Time and Labor Intensive: Women and children often bear the responsibility for gathering fuelwood. This time could be better spent on education, income-generating activities, or other productive tasks.

The household air pollution from open fires causes 600,000 deaths a year in Africa and ranks as the second-highest health risk on the continent. A switch to efficient stoves could prevent over 250 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year. The challenge, however, is that the families most reliant on open-fire cooking often lack the financial means to purchase these cleaner alternatives.

This is the case in rural and peri-urban communities in Zambia, where wood fuel is the primary source of energy for cooking, and open, three-stone fires are commonplace. The Zambia Improved Cookstove project, managed by  “The African Stove Company” (TASC), aims to address this issue by replacing open fire or traditional cookstoves with fuel-efficient stoves, reducing the burning of firewood and coal.

How the project works:

The TASC team captures data from each household about the appliances and fuel sources they are using. Households relying on wood fuel on open fires are then offered “Rocketworks Zama Zama” stoves, which combust biomass fuels more efficiently. These stoves reduce wood fuel use by approximately 70% per household and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 6 tons per household per year. 

Additionally, the stoves’ higher combustion energy reduces smoke by an estimated 50%, significantly reducing incidents of respiratory illness amongst the women and children who are historically most exposed to household air pollution.

The first improved cookstove was distributed in Zambia on the 21st of September 2021. Since then, more than 33,000 stoves have been distributed to households within Zambia.

Goodee's purchase of 20 carbon credits will contribute to the distribution of improved cookstoves in Zambia—an amount that equals avoiding the release of 20 tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) into the atmosphere. This will not only have a positive environmental impact by reducing CO2 emissions, but it will also improve the lives of individuals who are no longer exposed to the harmful effects of open fires.

Learn more about The African Stove Company here. 

Tradewater US Refrigerant Destruction Project

Tradewater is a mission-based project development company strategically focused on collecting, controlling, and destroying potent non-CO2  greenhouse gasses, permanently preventing their release into the atmosphere. They are also a certified B Corp. 

The Tradewater project we invested in focuses on responsible end-of-life solutions for refrigerants.

What is a refrigerant?

A refrigerant is a compound typically found in fluid or gaseous states. 

It absorbs heat from the environment and can provide refrigeration or air conditioning when combined with other components such as compressors and evaporators. Refrigerants have had extremely harmful impacts on the environment as they often contain Ozone-Depleting Substances, namely CFCs and HCFCs.

While these refrigerants were banned from production almost 40 years ago via the Montreal Protocol, no mandates were put into place for the responsible destruction of existing ones. In fact, a recent study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that 11 billion tons of CO2e are at risk of being released into the atmosphere from CFC gasses. Refrigerant management and destruction is seen as one of the top solutions for preventing catastrophic climate change.

How the project works:

Tradewater collects these refrigerants in the United States and arranges for their permanent and responsible destruction, preventing the harmful CFCs and HCFCs from being released into the atmosphere.

Tradewater has completed over 23,000 transactions in 49 states and has invested over $40 million into local communities. To date, they have destroyed 8,857 lbs of refrigerants, preventing 67,967 tons of CO2e from entering the atmosphere.

Thanks to Goodee’s Investment, they will be able to prevent another 20 tons. 

Learn more about Tradewater here.