Our Journey to Net Zero: Progress, Challenges, and Future Goals

At Impact+, we believe we can contribute to the change we want to see in the world.

People are now demanding more of the businesses they support, and we think that the only companies which have a future, are companies which build solutions that are good for people, the planet, and profit. This is the genesis of our business, not an add-on. We are committed to growing sustainably by aligning our mission and our actions in a regenerative business model.

Even though we are a very small business, we play a role on contributing, positively or negatively to Climate Change. The SDG 13 is very relevant for us, and we hold ourselves accountable not only for our own carbon footprint but also for our whole value chain carbon footprint.

Our commitment progress 2019-2025

In 2019 we joined the B-Corp movement of companies committing to achieving Net Zero by 2030. We published a comprehensive strategy to achieve it detailing the first steps towards that path. How did we do until today? That’s what we want to share today.

Why is it important to us?

Measuring our carbon footprint is not just a technical exercise for Impact+, it is the foundation of our responsibility as a business with purpose. Without accurate data, there is no way to understand the true scale of our impact or to design effective strategies for reduction. By tracking our emissions year after year, we gain clarity on where we can act fastest, where we need innovation, and how our choices ripple through our entire value chain.

This allows us to be accountable to our stakeholders and to ourselves, ensuring that our Net Zero commitment is not just an aspiration, but a measurable, achievable path forward. For us, measurement is the bridge between good intentions and real climate action.

Transparency matters

Since 2019, we have been publishing our Impact Report. They are all publicly available on our website. These Impact Reports are quite comprehensive and demonstrate both negative and positive impacts of our work, both the failed goals and achievements, new commitments and relevant business metrics. This is a very important document for us that, at the same time, makes us proud of the work we do.

In these Impact Report, we also publish our carbon emissions metrics, evolution and yearly progress. This allows clients, employees and other stakeholders to hold us accountable for our own promises and commitments and ensures it’s not just empty talk.

How it started

We didn’t start from zero. When we made our commitment, we already had a lot of sustainability initiatives implemented. From the basics (LED lights, water reductors, solar panels, preference for virtual meetings, remote team policy) to more advance initiatives like 100% renewable energy and public transportation policy for in city meetings. To make progress, we had to go beyond the usual.

So it all started in November 2019, when we made this commitment together with other 500+ B-Corps.

We reinforced it with we pledged to “Climate Neutral Now” in June 2020.

We read, read, read a lot. We spoke with other B-Corps that were already advanced in this process and we took the example of other companies which are recognized by their best practice like IKEA and Google. We read some more detailed and technical guidance from a wide range of entities such as IPPC, Science Based Targets initiative, The Climate Group, WBCSD, The B team, CLG Europe, Ceres, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), among others.

But, as WBCSD chief Peter Bakker said, “the real work starts with turning climate pledges into plans”. A lot of reading and webinars later, in April 2021, we launched a comprehensive strategy to achieve it. It was quite a struggle to start a template from scratch in a blank page. We created tools to gather data, a process to regularly gather the needed metrics and also to update and communicate progress. 

And decided to also join the We Declare a Climate Emergency later in November of the same year.

Because we knew that the methodology is quite complex and the data hard to collect, we  defined that the first 5 years would be mainly to improve measurement accuracy and reducing the main emissions sources. A mix of quick-wins with addressing the number one source of emissions. The last years would be more focused on reducing what is still possible reducing and combining it with emissions compensation.

How we do it

Guiding principles

We defined a set of guiding principles for this commitment and metrics assessment:

GUIDING PRINCIPLE 1: Transparency and Good Governance

As mentioned, we publish an Impact Report every year. We also share our Company Policies & Commitments publicly on our website, namely:

1. Code Of Ethics (In English / Em Português)
2. Human Right Policy (Read It)
3. Volunteering Programs' Policy (Read It)
4. Procurement Policy (Read It)
5. Environment Management Policy (Read It)
6. Equal Employment - Non Discrimination Statement (Read It)
7. Supplier's Code Of Ethics And Conduct (Read it)
8. Sustainable Tourism Policy (Read it)

GUIDING PRINCIPLE 2: Encouraging Transformative Policy through collaboration

We believe in the power of collaboration. More important than our individual targets and reductions are the industry-wide collaborations that can drive real infrastructure changes. The tourism sector can work together towards a collective goal for a more sustainable sector – but only if companies collaborate. This strategy has helped us rethink the way we can reduce emissions and work collaboratively to achieve that. We want to use this commitment to be Net Zero by 2030 to be catalyzer for change. We want to engage employees, suppliers and customers in our journey and share the milestones, the obstacles, the difficulties we face on the process to get to our goal. 

We also make an important point of being a channel for raising awareness about a number of social and environmental causes. We use our blog and social media to write and share about the different SDGs and invite different partners to share their vision as well. Some of those causes are very much related with Climate Change and emissions. Supporting this awareness message is part of our identity and, hopefully, can inspire others to do the same.

GUIDING PRINCIPLE 3: The importance of training

Engaging our team in this strategy is an essential for its success. Our team has to be the first to be motivated to participate, build and improve this strategy as they are the ones collecting the data, implementing the actions planned and acting to achieve our goals. We believe we have a highly motivated team to contribute towards this goal, despite that, the role of the managers is to provide training so everyone understands the strategy overview, its goals and the action plan for the next years. 

GUIDING PRINCIPLE 4: We recognize imperfection

We would like to finish this section by recognizing the limitations to our calculations based on lack of specific data, estimations and other variables that are out of our control. Sometimes, there are lack of local-based data so we have to extrapolate from international indicators which is not the ideal situation.

We are recognize that we do not have the technical expertise that an professional sustainability consultant trained in emission calculation would have but due to financial limitations, we were not able to hire anyone to do this plan for us. 

Our Progress

We have done a lot, and we have failed a lot. 

Our initial strategy, published in 2021, has a set or goals from then until 2029. From those, we have achieved some of them, we have achieved others that were not planned and go beyond what we intended, but we have also failed some other milestones.

What we have achieved already:

• 100% renewable energy consumption: implemented since 2020

• Choose preferably electric transfers: implemented since 2021

• Recycle 75% of our waste: We have metrics around this 75% every year

• Maintain 50+% of employee using public transportation, bike or working remotely (86% in 2023): We offer the transportation monthly pass to all employees IF they commute to work using it

• Switch to a green website host: In 2024

• Install solar panels: We installed 32 solar panels that provide most of our energy consumption during day time

We have not done yet:

• Create a series of workshops to train suppliers

• Collaborate with suppliers to co-create more efficient solutions

• Choose only green transfers

• 50% clients’ flight emissions compensated (goal set)

Every year we implement something new:

2020: Plant trees as a team to compensate our Scope 1 Emissions

2021: Plant trees as a team to compensate our Scope 1 Emissions & We installed 32 solar panels that provide most of our energy consumption during day time

2022: We started to offer the transportation monthly pass to all employees IF they commute to work using it

2023: We bought two electric cars which we charge with our solar panels during peak sun time

2024: Plant trees as a team to compensate our Scope 1 Emissions & We switched to a green website host

2025: We plan to compensate the emissions of our team flights

Results

Unfortunately, it’s not been really possible to show the evolution of the emissions along the years as we adapted the template from year to year and corrected what was mistakenly calculated. This generated a disparity of results that are not comparable.

For example, we changed the way we accounted for the energy consumption of our remote team. In 2023, we started to account for the % of renewable energy of their bills and that affects the results since we didn’t do it before but does not reflect any factual change to what we do.

Another example is the way we calculated the Purchased Goods & Services emissions as we started to do it by origin of the product but that methodology proved to be too complex to collect and to process. In 2023, we started using the amount spent by supplier and accounted for a relevant emission factor. Of course the results were very different and not comparable this year as we increased the number of purchases but the emissions significantly dropped. It’s not a relevant result to show.

We are confident that we have now stabilized the data collection and processing methodology so the next years results can be comparable.

For the record, this is the summary table of each year’s emissions and their scopes distribution from 2020 to 2024.

As it is evident, and as it is the case for virtually any services business, scope 3 is the core of the emissions. Here should be our focus to improve our operations and reduce emissions.

Future Strategy

Our focus is obviously on the major factor that affects our emissions: Our client’s flights. We have tried, and failed, for several years to incentivize flight compensation and we need to do it better.

In the future, we aim to walk towards this compensation cost to be included into the program fee so it is automatically compensated when the client buys a program. 

We also have measures to improve all the other emissions sources such as:

• Changing our fleet to electric powered vans, once the technology is at a more advance stage and there are better solutions for the end of cycle of batteries.
• Compensate all of our team’s flights
• Find more sustainable suppliers
• Find supplier closer to the delivery point, our houses
• Find a more sustainable laundry supplier

This is a work-in-progress goal setting effort. Every year, we analyse what we have achieved and what we have not and adjust accordingly in order to meet our ultimate goal of being Net Zero by 2030. 

Further goals will be defined and published along the years and hopefully we can share this progress more regularly. 

As a social enterprise, we have big impact ambitions, and we have a vision to progressively become Carbon Positive in the future. Curious to know more? Check our website and our Impact Reports!

One step at a time!