Low Carbon
Angus and Lorna Ross are part of a collective that own 50 acres of native woodland a few miles downstream from their workshop and approach this with humble stewardship.
It is possible that under ‘off-setting schemes’ we could claim the carbon sequestered (or locked into) trees in this woodland off-sets the carbon generated by running our business and we could perhaps use this to claim that we are a ‘carbon-neutral’ or ‘carbon-negative’ business. However we don’t believe this approach is correct. We must all aim for absolute zero carbon emissions, not net zero. The carbon off-setting schemes feel part of seeing the natural world as separate and under our dominium, rather than considering ourselves to be part of this natural world. We feel we have no right to claim that the cleaner air and exquisite natural carbon cycles of a woodland negates damaging carbon emissions associated with life and business in the modern world. However we do feel we can claim to be ‘lower carbon’ in a few ways.
Lower carbon material
We work in solid wood and trees grow wood with no damaging carbon emissions. Solid wood is lower carbon than all processed materials and much lower than plastics and metal.
We work with local wood. Almost all of our wood comes from Perthshire and there are less carbon emissions associated with local transport, compared to all imported wood.
Our wood is felled by local tree-surgeons working with hand-tools. The chain-saws use oil and we are investigating ways to replace this with bio-oils. Our felling of native hard-wood trees in Scotland involves single trees or thinning a few trees per year as part of a sustainable woodland management plan maintaining continuous tree cover. We source legal, ethical and local timber from small local saw-mills using the Working Woods Label and we continuously develop these local networks. This is much lower carbon than the industrial scale logging (which destroys complex forest eco-systems) involved in mass-produced wooden furniture.
Lower carbon process
We work with traditional hand-tools, powered hand-tools and atelier-workshop-scale saws, and and this is lower carbon than the factory scale of most furniture making. The electricity used is from renewable sources.
Steam-bending allows us to work with air-dried wood that is lower carbon than kiln-dried wood.
Our traditional joint work is lower carbon than using metal screws.
The material and process involved in our hand-oiled finish has no greenhouse gas emissions unlike the sprayed lacquer finish on most wood furniture.
Through good design, we strive to use timber in increasingly efficient ways.
Lower carbon energy
We buy from a company selling renewable energy which is lower carbon than electricity from fossil fuels.
Lower carbon volumes
We make to order and there is no over-production or waste-stock and this is lower carbon than the mass-produced model. Read more about the circular economy in the sustainability section found in the footer.
A few notes on carbon off-setting.
Watching the sustainable and regenerative cycles in our woodland has helps us glimpse the complex systems involved with air, soil and water. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air through their leaves in the process of photosynthesis, and then store carbon in their wood. Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) releases CO2 (carbon) and is causing global climate change that threatens people, wildlife and ecosystems.
Urgent action is required to drastically reduce carbon emissions and there is currently great interest in using trees for ‘carbon-capture’ and ‘off-setting’ to achieve ‘net carbon-neutral’. However the thinking behind this is sometimes deliberately misleading. Rather than genuinely reducing the amount of carbon generated, a company may continue to pollute as before but say they are ‘off-setting’ through tree planting (as the future trees will store carbon), or purchase an existing forest (to say these trees cancel out the carbon they are generating), or even just buy the rights to claim that the carbon sequestered (used) by an existing or future forest, is off-setting their carbon. These schemes may be a smoke and mirrors, greenwashing exercise. Many questions should be asked of anyone claiming to ‘off-set’ or to be ‘carbon neutral’. For schemes involving trees and forestry we need to ask who is planting or managing the forest? What trees? Where is it? What is the priority - carbon capture or well-being of local people and habitats? What is the land currently used for? Do we need it food production? Is the land a complex existing forest being cleared for damaging mono-silviculture? What land? There isn’t enough land on the planet to plant enough trees to off-set carbon pollution. What timescale? Trees take decades to sequester significant amounts of carbon and that carbon will be released if it is burnt or dies. It seems fraudulent to claim the CO2 reduction caused by trees growing, with no imput from that company. However schemes that support local people to protect forests under threat from illegal logging, does feel legitimate. We also need to compare the amount of carbon locked in by trees (over decades) to the actual amount of carbon being generated through burning fossil fuels or manufacturing processes over the same time period.
Huge amounts of money are flooding into measuring tools, into land for tree planting, and into forestry to use for off-setting. This may distract us from the bigger and urgent questions; how to stop using fossil fuels now, how to reduce our demand for energy, and how to establish alternative sources of energy for heating, manufacture, transport, and living in the digital realm. Good measuring tools do allow you to compare companies and we have now calculated our carbon footprint using “Compare Your Footprint” website with the help of Blue Patch Let’s Do Net Zero programme. We have done this to be as transparent as possible about the amount of carbon generated by our business.
The UN Climate report published on 28 February 2022, concluded that climate change is impacting the world far faster than scientists had anticipated and that countries are not doing enough to reduce their carbon emissions.
We can take personal responsibility to lower carbon emissions generated by our own life. We can look for genuinely lower carbon options for: building our home, insulating our home, heating our home; how we travel and the amount we travel; the food we eat; the materials and manufacturing processes in the stuff we buy; reducing the amount of stuff we buy; improving the quality of the stuff we buy and keeping it in use for as long as possible, and investing money in banks, shares or pensions in lower carbon schemes.
We are not claiming to be perfect and doing the Compare Your Footprint report showed us the impact of using a small amount of air travel for business. As this is something we can control we will try even harder not to use air travel for business.
We must all aim for absolute zero carbon emissions to have any hope of reaching net zero.