Moneybox Becomes Carbon Neutral

By becoming carbon neutral, Moneybox seeks to play its part in contributing to the UK’s net-zero emissions targets and global Paris agreement targets by taking action to operate and grow the business in a sustainable way. Moneybox is the first UK fintech to sign the pledge.

Moneybox has worked with Alectro, the carbon analytics company verified by UN Climate Change, to map its carbon footprint and deliver a multifaceted carbon offsetting programme designed to work towards a greener, carbon neutral world and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The project consisted of rigorous, in-depth analysis of all activities of Moneybox, its employees and suppliers, to map the company’s carbon footprint and enable them to achieve carbon-neutral status. This was achieved by offsetting unavoidable emissions through a mixture of Gold Standard accredited offsets, and United Nations accredited Certified Emission Reductions, ensuring they meet the toughest criteria and have the largest impact possible.The analysis measured emissions related to everything from building facilities and work related travel, to employee commuting, office coffee consumption and Moneybox social events, resulting in a carbon footprint of 0.84 tCO2e per employee prior to offsets. Compared to the UK commercial average of 6.4 tCO2e per employee, this puts Moneybox in a strong position to manage their footprint going forward.

As a component of the project, Moneybox has signed the UN Climate Neutral Now pledge, becoming part of a community of more than 300 organisations committed to working towards a carbon neutral world. The initiative sets out three principles for organisations and individuals: measure, reduce and offset. By becoming a signatory, Moneybox hopes to encourage more young companies to take climate action early on and grow their businesses in a responsible and sustainable way.

Moneybox is on a mission to help everyone save and invest for the future. As part of its broad range of saving and investment accounts, it offers customers the opportunity to invest in a socially responsible fund, which considers environmental, social and governance factors in its selection process. Customers can choose this option for all of the Moneybox investment products, including the Moneybox Personal Pension. Moneybox is also currently exploring how it can include its customers in this project by helping them map out and reduce their own carbon footprint.

To offset its current carbon emissions, Moneybox has committed to support a select group of charitable projects to support the UN SDGs. Employees were asked to vote on their top three goals and Moneybox has worked in conjunction with Alectro to choose the projects that best target these SDGs. This year, Moneybox has chosen to support the following projects***: Safe Water Access in Rwanda, 100 MW Wind Power Project at Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, WithOneSeed Timor-Leste Community Forestry Programme and Chacayes Hydroelectric Project, Chile.

A survey of employee opinions about issues surrounding emissions and climate change was conducted by Alectro as part of the wider analysis. 83% of Moneybox employees said that it is important to them to work for a company that takes responsibility for its actions relating to climate change, demonstrating an employee mindset where the environment is high on the agenda.

Charlie Mortimer, co-founder of Moneybox said: “We are incredibly excited to announce that we have fully mapped our carbon footprint as a business and that Moneybox is now carbon neutral. Achieving carbon neutral status has been an important mission for us, and it’s something we’re really proud of to have achieved so early in our journey as a company. As individuals and as a business we all have a responsibility to work towards a more sustainable planet. Being completely transparent with our customers, employees and partners about our carbon footprint, how we’re working to reduce and offset it, is therefore very important to us.

“We will continue to explore ways that we can reduce our existing carbon footprint in everything we do by maintaining a focus on recycling, low levels of business travel and choosing suppliers with a similar transparent and proactive approach. We are also currently exploring how we can include our customers in the journey towards taking action for our planet, and working towards a carbon neutral future.”

Bertie Ivory-Peters, co-founder of Alectro: “This year marks the start of the decade which will define the global response to climate change, and working with Moneybox showcased many reasons to be optimistic about the decade and the future beyond that. The interactions we had with Moneybox exemplified how companies can completely embrace a positive change, and translate previous good sentiments into quantitative data with actionable insights. Moneybox has made a commitment to the environment, and to growing their business sustainably. With this commitment, Moneybox has shown themselves to be market leaders in their sector”.