Wise Investment Carbon Offset Initiative | Chipping Norton School & Woodland Trust

Posted: 8th January 2021 Key

At the core of most investor motivations, there is a focus on the future. We want to invest wisely so that we can enjoy prosperous years ahead, making our money work for us, rather than us having to work forever to make money.

When spending so much time thinking of the future, it’s impossible not to think of what it’s going to look like and what role we play in creating the environment that we, our children and then our grandchildren are going to retire in.

With this in mind, Wise Investment established an annual carbon offsetting budget that we invest in initiatives that will help us to offset the carbon footprint of our organisation and its 35 staff.

Planting Trees to Offset Carbon Emissions

This year, through Oxford Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLep), we connected with the Chipping Norton School. The school has been working with Woodland Trust on a tree-planting project, and we have agreed to contribute £3,000 to their project to offset our carbon emissions.

What we love about this initiative is the hands-on involvement of both the students and our staff. Rather than just spending some money to make ourselves feel better, the tree planting project engages students and educates them on how much carbon is emitted and how many trees are needed to offset this.

One such student helped us crunch those numbers. Considering our electricity costs, fuel consumption, and the number of employees, our annual carbon emissions amount to a total of 27.49 tonnes. While the average tree absorbs 1 tonne of carbon in its 100 year lifetime, we needed to factor in that our trees would not be mature for about seven years, so we would have to plant 180 trees, which would mature over the next seven years and absorb back our carbon emissions for this year.

To engage our staff in the project, Wise employees were able to take their annual volunteer day to help plant trees at the school.

Contact Wise Investment today to learn how we can help you invest in your future.

Author

Alex Rae