Spectrum goes Nut Zero with Neno Macadamia Trust

31 May 2023 by Martin Hamilton, Principal Consultant

Following a period of engagement with Environmental Sustainability at Spectrum we are delighted to say that for a second year Spectrum has partnered with Neno Macadamia Trust to mitigate the damage of our carbon emissions.

It all began with the formation of a Sustainability Subgroup reporting into the regular company meetings some years back. Improved recycling was a quick win but grappling with how to deal with the challenge of our carbon emissions seemed like a bigger nut to crack.

But how big was that nut? We decided to progress under our own steam with a quick process of benchmarking the major sources of carbon emissions. There are plenty of reputable carbon calculators out there and as a business we already collect much of the data that’s relevant. Examples are office power and water, car miles, air miles, even ferry miles to the Outer Hebrides. Plug the data into the carbon calculator and out came the CO2 emissions for 2020-2021. It was a big nut, all 33.5 tonnes of it.

The second question which we had already been thinking about was how to reduce the size of that nut in the future. Ideas flowed – the office lighting was an obvious one. Apart from the consumption of fossil fuel generated electricity it consumed, it heated the office in the summer so then we needed more air conditioning. So we got that changed to super-efficient LED and meanwhile switched all our electricity purchases to a renewable tariff.

But then we knew that we couldn’t reduce our carbon to zero overnight so we needed to think about carbon damage mitigation while we seek those ways to reduce fossil fuel usage year on year. Our customers want to know what we are doing about our sustainability and staff in the business also want to know.

Looking around for carbon damage mitigation (or offsetting) can feel a bit like entering a minefield. The most widely known method of offsetting is tree planting. But how can you trust it? How do you know it’s effective and being done sustainably in ‘partnership’ with its surrounding eco-systems? We had a head start here because we already knew of a credible and established organisation doing just that, working sustainably to sequester CO2 as a by-product of innovative smallholder agroforestry in Malawi.

NMT – the Neno Macadamia Trust – has a strapline which is “Building Food Security through trees that sequester CO2”. These trees have so many other benefits on the ground apart from tidying up our carbon emissions. One example is the macadamia nut crops which can provide vital nutrition to smallholder farmer families as well as a source of income when sold to the market. So our payment would be magnified in its effect much more than if the money were spent here in the UK. Spectrum decided to partner with NMT and pay for one year of tree growth and carbon sequestration that was happening real-time by 1675 mature fruiting macadamia nut trees while we were emitting our 33.5 tonnes of CO2 here in the UK.

Mature, and Young Macadamia Nut Trees supported by NMT in Malawi

If you want to see the details of how it all works please go here Neno Macadamia Trust

In line with our Company Carbon Policy, we have now carried out our second annual assessment of carbon emissions and our carbon “nut” was only a 21.2 tonnes in 2021/22 which represents a 37% reduction. This year we continued our partnership and are delighted to have provided a payment for the sequestration carried out by 1060 trees over in Malawi. So Spectrum has not only reduced its emissions but has now been Net Zero for carbon emissions for 2 years in a row.

That nut wasn’t so hard to crack after all!

Other info at NMT is
www.nenomacadamiatrust.org/news
www.nenomacadamiatrust.org/gallery