Climate Action

Brands rally around climate initiatives to achieve change.

The temperature keeps rising. But luckily, so does the pressure to do something about it. Within the outdoor industry, companies and organizations have started to set bolder emissions goals – together. Today, there are a number of industry initiatives with clear targets and commitments. Suston presents three ongoing collaborations and asks companies why they have joined in these efforts.

HOW MUCH OF THE BUSINESS IS INCLUDED?

A company’s greenhouse gas emissions can be divided into three “scopes.”

SCOPE 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources the company owns or controls. These include burning fossil fuels from stationary sources used for heating or from vehicles you own or operate. For many companies in the outdoor industry, this is the easy part.

SCOPE 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy. If your company hasn’t switched to buying energy exclusively from renewable sources – just do it. But in a digitalized world, some parts can be trickier. What energy sources are the servers you use for your e-commerce running on? And if you use cloud services like Dropbox, should their emissions also count?

SCOPE 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (not included in scope 2) that occur in the value chain of the reporting company including both upstream and downstream emissions. These emissions are tricky – both to measure and to reduce. At the same time, scope 3 is where industry collaborations can be most useful and make the biggest difference.