What is CO2e?

Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO2e) is a term for describing different greenhouse gases in a common unit. This includes not just Carbon Dioxide but other greenhouse gases that we need to consider when combating the climate crisis, such as methane. This is the best unit in which to measure your carbon footprint.?

What is a carbon footprint?

Your footprint is a way of showing your carbon emissions, compared to other people and other countries. It’s your impact on the planet.

Your individual emissions are built up from the energy you use personally for electricity and travel, as well as the energy that’s required to produce your food and all the other stuff you buy, whether it’s made in the UK or elsewhere in the world. Like an individual, a business can have a carbon footprint too. This is normally presented as the carbon footprint over a total year. Some companies will show you the carbon footprint per product. This is how Oatly do it.

What is the difference between Carbon Neutral, Climate Positive and Net Zero?

They sound similar but one is much more impressive than the other two in terms of making a real difference to the climate crisis.?

• Carbon Neutral - “I have done a high-level guess of my footprint and have bought offsets yearly to cover those emissions.”
• Climate Positive - "I want to do better than just be carbon neutral so I will spend a little more on offsets"
• Net Zero - "We report on all our emissions, try to reduce them as much as possible, and then we invest in projects that either prevent emissions elsewhere or pull carbon out of the air to reach a “net-zero” balance on paper." This is the one you should be aiming for.

Where do you get your numbers from?

The majority of our emission conversion factors will be sourced from DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). There will be some more unique pieces of data that ecollective has had to acquire but this will be detailed in the methodology. All our work is transparent and open for criticism. We believe it is the best way for us to improve our scoring year on year.

How accurate is our data?

Technology used to track emissions is relatively new and constantly changing. Canopy & Stars places have such a vast variation in infrastructure and operations that we could have asked hundreds of questions to get a more accurate response, but we had to consider the time owners had to engage with this project. The intention is to improve the data we collect with time, using the actual data you provide to refine our questions and results. As the famous saying goes “Don’t sacrifice the good in search of the perfect”

Why does my score look wrong?

You may have completed a section incorrectly, or inputted the fuel for your entire site and not accounted for the percentage used solely by your accommodation. Remember the score is per bedroom, per night. We’ve done it this way because our spaces are so eclectic, and it allows us to make the best comparison across the accommodation industry. Where we believe number of bedrooms has been entered incorrectly, we have manually amended.

We have contacted some owners that we felt had unusual scores, but if you think yours may be incorrect, please contact tessa.holmes@canopyandstars.co.uk

How do I know if my carbon footprint is good or bad?

Everyone has a carbon footprint. The lower yours is the less impact you are having on the environment and there are a lot of things you can do to help reduce your footprint in your daily life. ?For comparison, the average across the Canopy & Stars collection is 7.5kg CO2e and the National average for UK Hotels is 13.9kg CO2e. The aim is not perfection but to do better year on year. No matter how big or small our footprint is today, we can all do better tomorrow.?

What are you going to do with this information?

Our main priority is to help owners reduce their impact, we’ll use the information and trends to provide helpful guidance and inspire owners to reduce make changes and reduce their impact. We’re also using it to set our own business-wide reduction target.

Will you introduce Carbon Labelling?

There is a movement across all industries to implement carbon labelling, in which a carbon emissions value is displayed alongside all products. Some travel companies have already introduced this to their holidays. It’s something which is coming up in conversation and we’re in the early stages of thinking about our approach, but which we will not be implementing immediately.

What about a guest’s footprint?

Don’t worry, we’re exploring how we can tackle this too, by inspiring people to travel in a more responsible manner. For you as owners, this means ensuring we have the right information about EV charging points and accessing your space by public transport, bike… or even on foot! We’ll be working on gathering this information in the coming months.

Recalculating your score

Our intention is to send out the same survey in 2023, to see where reductions have been made across our collection. We appreciate some things may take time to have an impact, but we want to ensure we continue tracking and celebrating reductions. In the meantime, we’ll also be working to refine our data and analysis.