Are you a charity?

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We are a UK limited business because this allows us to act fast and make quick decisions in this rapidly changing environment.

We are in the process of registering earthrhize as a certified B Corporation, a business that meets ‘the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose’.

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What is my earthrhize HALO?

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Your earthrhize HALO is a measurement of your positive impact on the planet across four elements of the HALO acronym: Humanity, Air, Land and Oceans.

See Our HALO page and blogs to understand the thought processes and considerations we take into account in calculating your HALO.

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How do you select projects?

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We have developed our own algorithm, the HALO, to assess how a project contributes to your overall environmental impact, both in isolation and as part of a broader pool of projects.

We use the HALO to test whether a project aligns with our values. The HALO draws upon a combination of methodologies, referencing such concepts as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Planetary Pressures-adjusted Human Development Index and our own proprietary metrics.

We then use this tool each month to help us select projects as part of a balanced approach - decisions which we make with help from advisors around the world, including academics.

Our objective is to balance your project portfolio over our four elements of Humanity, Air, Land and Oceans. This way you can be confident that your subscription is going towards projects which tackle a broad range of environmental and social issues beyond simple carbon offsetting.

Check out our Projects page to see how the HALO is created for each project.

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How are you different to carbon offsetting companies?

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We are different to other carbon offsetting companies because we aim to go Beyond Carbon. In our view the recent quantification of carbon has often led to a strictly formulaic approach to environmental balance which ignores the other profound impacts our lifestyles have on the only home we’ve ever known. Carbon calculators, of which there are many, only take you so far. Measurements of per capita carbon footprint cover a wide range of outcomes, depending upon the methodology used. On balance we broadly agree with the approach of the WWF that advises that an average footprint is likely to be somewhere between 1 to 2 tonnes per month. We have purposefully not chosen to drown you in statistics - after all who can really tell the difference between 10.4 tonnes of carbon and 12 tonnes of carbon? For every nunaced approach to carbon there is a panel of academic experts to defend the fact that 10.4 tonnes is more accurate than 10.6 tonnes. At the margin for us it's all about the direction of travel - in a holistic manner. Whilst our objective in our £9.99 Plan is to balance a typical UK footprint of 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, we avoid giving unrealistic guarantees about the amount of carbon we will offset each year. As we approach COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021 we expect that the price of carbon certificates will be volatile, prices may increase. Instead, our holistic approach means we concentrate on buying certified credits that contribute to meeting broader environmental and social impacts (the HALO effect) rather than buying the cheapest to hit a carbon target. Of course, feel free to contact us if you would like to discuss the cheapest way to maximise the amount of certifed carbon you can purchase. There are many worthwhile renewable energy projects, particularly in India, where the price of carbon certificates issued under the UNFCCC CDM-CER programme is relatively low. Without doubt these projects have their place as part of a well-constructed HALO, the primary aim of our approach. But buying cheap carbon as part of a mision to claim we're meeting illusory carbon targets is not part of our ethos.

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How can you prove my impact?

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Our offsetting projects are certified through the UN Clean Development Mechanism, Verified Carbon Standard or the Gold Standard, developed by the WWF.

We send you a monthly report that shows exactly how and where your money has been spent. Carbon certificates are retired to avoid re-sale or double counting.

We hold receipts and certificates from funding tree planting and clean up of ocean bound plastic on your behalf to be as transparent and traceable as possible.

Contact as at admin@earthrhize.org for any more questions.

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Where does Biodiversity fit into my HALO?

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The segmentation of our work into the four elements of the HALO (Humanity, Air, Land and Oceans) has raised questions about our approach to preserving biodiversity, in particular other animal species. At earthrhize, a project’s role in conserving irreplaceable ecosystems is a central part of our assessment. Our considerations about a project’s impact on biodiversity principally reside in our assessment of the Land and Ocean sections of the HALO. Within land, we support projects that safeguard biodiversity hotspots. Our initial REDD+ projects operate in tropical forests in Peru and Papua New Guinea, two areas rich with endemic species. The flora and fauna of the Amazon rainforest and Papua New Guinea combined represent about 15% of the world’s known biodiversity. Where biodiverse ecosystems have been destroyed, we support their restoration through human intervention by planting trees. In Madagascar, the biodiversity that has evolved during 88 million years of geographic isolation is under threat because of the destruction of habitats. More than 90% of Madagascar’s original forests have been lost since humans first arrived there. Our partner Eden Reforestation Projects is working to restore Madagascar’s coastal habitats, which will have beneficial impacts for a number of species. The impact of ocean plastic on marine life is also a central consideration in our partnership with Plastic Bank. We have all seen emotive images of animals trapped in plastic waste, clear evidence of the consequences of our plastic habit, but ingesting plastic is also causing a significant number of animal deaths. Since it is estimated that ocean plastic could outnumber fish by 2050, stopping plastic leaking into the ocean at source will be so important in order to maintain the health of our oceans.

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