Sustainability
Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do at Canopey. From the brands we work with, to our offices and tree planting schemes!
Key to everything we do is transparency. Our mantra is better, not best – there is always more we can do, but here is a run-down of what we've achieved so far.
How we vet brands
Our positive community of sustainable brands is growing – here's how we vet them.
We start by looking at any policies, charitable giving and fair working practices a brand may have.
We ask for trusted certifications given for products, like Vegan Society, Leaping Bunny and Soil Association. We're transparent about what we accept as evidence and this can all be read on each accreditation page.
Finally, we look at the materials a product is made from and use life cycle assessment (LCA) data from academic sources to measure their impact. Read more on our Impact page.
Find out more about the Canopey Kitemark.
Carbon positivity
We're proudly carbon positive, which means we’ve not just balanced out the carbon emissions we generate, but gone further.
We’re proud to have taken the SME Carbon pledge to be net zero by 2030, and have achieved it already.
We’ll continue working with Ecologi to use Gold Standard verified offsets to offset the footprint of our workforce as part of their Climate Positive Workforce scheme.
One Percent For The Planet
Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. We give a portion of our profits to One Percent For The Planet, a non-profit that works with more than 5,600 businesses globally including Patagonia and OXO.
Since founding in 2002 1% FTP has given over $435 million in environmental solutions. In 2022 alone the organisation certified more than £55 million in donations. We’re proud to be part of the community.
View our 1% FTP Page
Ocean Network
The UK is a nation surrounded by water. As founders we have grown up by the sea and are big on surfing!
Canopey is a proud member of Surfers Against Sewage’s Ocean Network, a community of businesses, freelancers, and creatives united in their passion for protecting our oceans, beaches, waves and wildlife. As of 2019 they had organised more than 1,530 beach cleans.
Learn more about the Ocean Network
ESGMark
We're pleased to be certified by ESGmark®, a symbol of trust and distinction, which allows consumers to identify organisations who believe in and act to deliver a fairer, more sustainable future.
Certifying was a rigorous process which looked at the company, how it's run and our policies for environmental, social and governance. We're proud to be part of the ESGmark community alongside Genie Drinks, GreenGlamour, Booheads and many more.
Learn more about ESG Mark
Our tech
As a digital platform it’s important that our entire website and servers are as green as possible. We run our website and Impact Calculator using Google Cloud servers.
Our website is built using Shopify, which is run entirely on renewable energy. According to Shopify’s 2021 sustainability report, the company has been carbon neutral since inception, offsets all employee travel, and purchases renewable energy certificates for company and home offices. In 2021 Shopify also became the largest corporate purchaser of direct air capture (DAC) carbon removal globally.
Shopify’s servers are run by Google Cloud. In 2007 Google became the first major company to commit to (and achieve) carbon neutrality for their operations, and since 2017 they’ve matched 100% of our electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases.
Google Cloud servers are on average two times more efficient than a regular enterprise data centre. Google also has a public report and goals for reducing water use at its centres, including a commitment to replenish 120% of the water they consume by 2030.
Tree planting
Humans have cut down approximately 50% of the world’s trees and continue to deforest about 15 billion trees every single year. While we don’t count our tree planting efforts within our carbon offsetting calculations, we feel we have a collective responsibility to reforest the earth.
It was also a great opportunity to live up to our namesake and begin growing our very own real-life canopy! We’ve already planted more than 10,000 trees with our reforestation partner Ecologi. These are verified to the Gold Standard and are planted through Eden Reforestation Projects.
But we have ambitious plans. So we’ve committed to planting a million trees through the Million Tree Pledge!
View our digital forest on Ecologi
Who we work with
The company you keep says a lot about you. So it’s always been important that the people we work with share our values.
Our accountants Triple Bottom Line have a huge focus on the environment, using 100% renewable energy for their website, being part of the Good Business Charter, and part of the SME Climate Hub commitment.
We also work with Fountain Partnership, an agency which is one of the founding members of the Million Tree Pledge.
Living Wage & Good Business Charter
We want to build a better kind of business, and to do that it’s important to not only have strong environmental practices but also strong company values.
Canopey is a proud Living Wage employer and is also signed up to the Good Business Charter, which measures behaviour over 10 components: real living wage, fairer hours and contracts, employee well-being, employee representation, diversity and inclusion, environmental responsibility, paying fair tax, commitment to customers, ethical sourcing, and prompt payment.
