The environment has always been at the heart of everything we do and we are so proud to be officially certified by the United Nations as carbon neutral, highlighting our commitment to sustainability.

What is carbon neutral?

Carbon neutral means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions by balancing carbon emissions with carbon removal (often through carbon offsets).

Many large companies and even governments have set carbon neutral goals, typically to achieve carbon neutrality within 10, 20 or even 30 years. Amazon have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2040, the UK government has said they aim to reach this milestone by 2050 and Delta, an American company, have pledged to become the first carbon neutral airline in the next 10 years.

All of these companies have given themselves plenty of time, which can be needed for big corporations. However, we knew that something needed to be done sooner than this. Thanks to our LEAF Marque audits, we have been monitoring our emissions for many years so were in a great position to become carbon neutral a lot sooner. Read on to find out how we became carbon neutral…

How did we become carbon neutral?

The first step was measure. This involved us looking at every part of our business, from each employee’s commute to work, to the amount of electricity used in our office and factory, to the fertiliser used on our fields. We calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from each and this gave us our carbon footprint.

We then signed up to the United Nations Climate Neutral Now Initiative Pledge. This pledge showed our commitment to measure, reduce and offset our carbon emissions. This pledge has been signed by many other companies and governments that are prioritising our environment and making a meaningful difference.

carbon neutral now logo

After measure, the next step was reduce. We are constantly working to reduce our emissions and through our LEAF farming practises, we are able to accurately measure this and continue to reduce them. Some of the ways we have reduced our emissions are:

– The installation of solar panels on our barn roofs in 2018 which now produce 50% of our total yearly electricity. In the summer months, we are producing a huge 80% of our electricity from the solar panels!

– We have dramatically reduced our fuel usage on the farm by stopping ploughing in 1998 and since then, have continued to reduce this further by using less fertiliser on our fields as the soil health increases and provides more nutrients to the crops. As well as reducing fuel usage, by stopping ploughing, we are actually locking in huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the soil, you can read more about this here.

– We use GPS systems on all our tractors to make them as efficient as possible, lowering our fuel usage and keeping emissions to a minimum.

– We use LED energy saving bulbs and timers on our lights to keep our electricity usage as low as possible too.

As we are a LEAF farm, we have a yearly audit to ensure we are doing the best to farm in harmony with nature, and we are always working to find new ways to reduce our emissions and our impact on nature!

The next step in our carbon neutral journey was to offset our remaining emissions. We used United Nations approved offsets and have been able to support a reforestation initiative in Uruguay and a United Nations clean energy project.

With this last step completed, we became certified as carbon neutral in January 2020 and received the Carbon Neutral Gold Standard from the United Nations!

carbon neutral

What’s next?

Becoming carbon neutral is a fantastic achievement, but we aren’t going to stop there. We aim to be carbon negative, that means we will be absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere than we put into it, so we would be removing carbon rather than adding it.

In order to become officially certified as carbon neutral, we had to use the United Nation’s way of calculating net carbon emissions. this unfortunately meant we could not take into account all the incredible work we do with our soils as the carbon stored in soils is not yet officially recognised as a carbon store. From our own calculations, if this was taken into account, we would already be carbon negative!

Duncan is now involved in European project to find an internationally accepted, verifiable and certifiable method of measuring soil organic content on a continental scale, encouraging farmers and land managers to adopt carbon capturing methods improve their soil carbon content. The project aims to empower farmers to become agents of climate mitigation, where soil carbon and health will become a financial asset for the farmer and provide natural capital for the wider society by reducing global carbon emissions.

sustainable farming featured

Here at Farrington Oils, we were incredibly proud to become the world’s first company to be certified as both carbon and plastic neutral earlier this year. As a small company, we were over the moon to have achieved a world-first! Especially as this ground-breaking achievement acknowledged our environmental credentials, something we all are very passionate about. As a business, Farrington Oils is now carbon and plastic neutral, so as employees we all felt that we could and should be measuring our personal carbon & plastic footprints and working to reduce our environmental impact.

Here we have a look at various members of the Farrington’s teams personal carbon and plastic footprints and hear how they have been working to reduce their environmental impact…

Rachel, Sales

Carbon: 5.04tonnes

Plastic: 69.59kg

I like to think I am a fairly careful person and try to avoid waste where I can, I like to cook from scratch, keep an eye on the heating and hot water and switch off lights that aren’t being used. With so much information in the media and with Duncan talking more about it at work, I have realised there is a lot that me and my family can do, small changes will add up to make a significant difference.

I’m a big tea drinker and at home fill the kettle and then work my way through the water in the kettle during the day, I was shocked when I realised how wasteful I was being with this and now only heat the water I need each time. I am gradually changing my family meals, we are already quite healthy but I want to move to a more sustainable diet, so we are eating more meat free meals, buying British meat from the local butcher whenever we can, and eating more fish from a sustainable source.

My plastic footprint was a big surprise – I eat a lot of fruit, salad and vegetables from the supermarket which are packed in plastic. I’ve found a link on my local council’s website to the company they use for our recycling and very detailed information on what can and can’t be recycled so I’m going to use this to improve the amount of packaging I recycle and to help make decisions when buying items based on their packaging. My local school has a recycling collection point for toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes and crisp packets too which I have started to use.

I’ve learnt recently that plastic bags can be reused until they wear out and use 3 time less energy than paper bags and 113 times less energy than cotton bags to make, they were invented for reuse but as a society we have decided to treat them like single use items rather than seeing the value in them, so I am also trying to focus more on the ‘reuse’ part of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’.

Emily, Sales

Carbon: 8.21tonnes

Plastic: 64.28kg

I was really surprised that both my carbon and plastic footprint were so high. I no longer use single use plastic drinks and use refillable cups and water bottles. I buy food in larger packs, batch cook and freeze to reduce waste. I could go to a butcher that supplies meat in brown wrapping paper, but my local butcher uses plastic bags, which aren’t recyclable. I think producers, shops and supermarkets need to continue to work on giving consumers more sustainable options. I also ensure that all my electric appliances are A grade and all my light bulbs are low energy.

Becs, Technical

Carbon: 9.23tonnes

Plastic: 58.63kg

I have a lifelong interest in sport and health and in recent years the natural progression from this has been to extend into a consideration for the environment and sustainability through an appreciation for energy expenditure and time spent enjoying the outdoors on my feet or bike. Though I have also recently come to realise that I have a genetic trait to see the value in all things and materials based on an unwanted tendency to hoard!

Sustainability was a factor in my decision to become vegetarian 10 years ago and also attracted me to working at Farrington Oils. At times my other interests such as seeing more of the world conflict with sustainability – international travel is definitely the largest of my footprints. I will make a conscious effort look at options to reduce this / offset in the future. On a smaller scale I am lucky that I enjoy cycling will continue to commute to work by bike (a 25 mile round trip) when I can – aiming for an average of twice per week over the year.

My next effort will be to reduce my consumption of convenience drinks whether hot or cold. With good planning I should be able to reduce this, though I will struggle to not see a convenience drink as a treat and will need to be creative to find ways to achieve this sustainably.

Gina, Marketing

Carbon: 5.91tonnes

Plastic: 44.73kg

My house is the highest part of my carbon footprint. Being a very old house with a fairly old boiler, it probably isn’t the most energy efficient. But I have had a smart meter and smart thermostat installed so I can keep a track of energy usage and ensure the heating is not on when it isn’t needed.

I’ve been trying to reduce the plastic footprint of my food shops by making much more from scratch. During the colder months, I make soup each week for my lunches (storing it in reusable containers), I’ve been making my own sourdough bread (with flour bought from a refill shop near to my house) and generally trying to make as much from scratch as I possibly can so I only need to buy fresh ingredients which helps reduce packaging (especially when buying loose fruit and veg). I have also swapped my shampoo in plastic bottles for plastic-free, vegan shampoo bars from Lush.

I now take a reusable water bottle and reusable coffee cup out with me so I never need to buy drinks in disposable packaging. Once you get into the habit of doing things like this, it’s actually super easy, plus, many coffee shops offer discounts when you use your own cup!

Living sustainably is important to all members of our team, we even have Steve and Kevin lift sharing every day to halve the carbon footprint of their commute and Jo drives an electric vehicle to work a few days a week and has purchased an electric bike to cycle to work in the warmer months. Of course, Duncan’s commute is the most environmentally friendly, as he walks 5 minutes from his front door to the office, truly net-zero!

As we all work to continue to reduce our carbon and plastic footprints, plus produce our award-winning carbon & plastic neutral cold pressed rapeseed oil and dressings, we hope to see more companies taking these steps to look after our environment! If you would like to work out your own environmental impact, the carbon footprint calculator is here and the plastic footprint calculator is here. Let us know your sustainable tips by getting in touch on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or email.