Grace Ashiru
Curbon, a South African business with a mission to reduce carbon emissions, will enable carbon-neutral online shopping with the debut of the country’s first plugin designed to combat climate change.
Curbon’s unique service allows online shoppers to take direct, meaningful steps to help the environment with every purchase.
The flagship product of the startup company calculates the emissions of customers’ carts at the checkout by using data from the world’s most prestigious climate science institutions. This allows customers to neutralize the carbon footprint of their purchases made in e-commerce stores in real time.
Mark Jones, who helped start Curbon and is now its director and co-founder, says that until now, consumers didn’t have many ways to change how their shopping affects the planet directly. “Curbon shopping is environmentally friendly.”
Curbon makes shopping more environmentally friendly. As more individuals start to think about the effects their decisions have on the environment and begin to expect more ethical and environmentally responsible business practices from the companies and brands they patronize, In South Africa, a real and substantial financial commitment to climate change initiatives is made feasible for the first time thanks to Curbon.
Curbon’s API uses the process of carbon offsetting to reduce and eventually neutralize the carbon equivalent emissions of users’ online purchases. This is part of Curbon’s mission to reduce the environmental impact of the entire e-commerce value chain.
This groundbreaking solution is a retail-first in South Africa, and it is accessible for Shopify, WooCommerce, Magneto, and other platforms in addition to being integrated into the checkout flow of the e-commerce stores owned and operated by Curbon’s partners.
Curbon uses thousands of data points to determine each online order’s carbon footprint. It does this by calculating the emissions caused by the entire sales process, from the retailer to the final customer and the production of goods and services.
And as online shopping grows fast and millions of people worldwide click the “Checkout” button, Carbon offsetting has developed as a useful tool for reducing the negative impact that present levels of consumerism have on the environment. This is accomplished by financial investments in climate programs that have the effect of lowering emissions.
Scientists and policymakers often have the most up-to-date and accurate information about climate change and the best ways to lessen its worst effects, but consumers don’t. Add to this the worry that people have about climate change, which is a huge, complicated global problem, and many people feel so overwhelmed that they want to give up.
Given that so much of today’s consumption is enabled online, the option to offset one’s carbon effect is a huge opportunity to take action to disrupt the status quo in which every act of carbon offsetting, no matter how tiny, makes a significant difference,” Jones said.
Introducing Curbon’s carbon-neutral checkout to e-commerce not only helps reduce a retailer’s negative impact on the environment but also provides a more direct route to sustainability for businesses, which in turn increases both brand value and consumer loyalty.
The relative significance of environmental responsibility throughout the buying process is becoming increasingly obvious. Consumers want to positively impact the world and give their money to companies that share their concerns for the environment. In only the past two years, the online retail space in South Africa has more than doubled, and it is projected to reach R30.2 billion in 2021.
According to Curbon co-founder and director Michael Pollock, “R150 million would be raised to fight climate change if only 20% of South Africans funded 2-3% of the value of their online carts toward carbon offsetting their purchases.”
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a scary picture of climate change, but it also says that the worst effects can still be lessened if we act now. The science is clear: Climate change threatens the health of people and the planet, but we still have a chance to create a future where everyone can live and thrive.
Curbon is a climate-focused finance firm that was founded to reduce the damage that online purchasing has on the environment. By making a tradeable permit available to merchants and consumers, Curbon credits can be purchased on behalf of consumers by Curbon, which will help reduce the negative effects of carbon emissions by reducing the amount of carbon emitted during production and during consumption by the end users.
