The climate and nature crisis is the biggest issue humanity has collectively faced, and locally we’re already feeling its impact. Throughout our twenty year history we’ve always cared about the planet, but for the last few years in particular we’ve been working hard to better understand and address our environmental impact directly.
We're carbon neutral
Being carbon neutral means that we’re reducing or balancing out all of our direct emissions - the fuel we’re burning and the energy we’re using ourselves. It doesn’t include things other businesses make and do for us; balancing those external emissions too would make us “net zero”.
LeftLion Ltd is now a carbon neutral company as of 2023, reducing our direct emissions by 99% (98.9% to be precise) since 2018, and offsetting the 1% that remains. We received excellent support in calculating our emissions from Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University. They’ve also helped us set a target of going fully net zero by 2025, meaning we’ll be reducing and balancing both our direct and indirect emissions.
We offset the remaining 1% of our emissions via direct air capture from Climeworks, meaning that we’re immediately taking that carbon out of the atmosphere. We’re removing 100 kilograms of carbon from the atmosphere to make sure we cover any overshoot of our forecasted 60 kilograms of direct emissions, which is what we produced in 2022.
Printing sustainably
Leftlion Magazine is fully recyclable and home-compostable. We print on paper that is recycled or made using FSC certified sources, and our printers boast one of the most modern and efficient printing presses in the UK, running on 100% renewable energy. We also aim to never print more magazines than we need to minimise waste, so every one of them (bar a few archive copies) ends up in our readers hands. If there is ever any wastage, it’s recycled.
Digital
Digital activities like running a website also have a carbon footprint, but we’ve managed to reduce those to zero too - LeftLion.co.uk’s servers are now powered using 100% renewable energy, and other web services we use to run our business are all carbon neutral.
Coverage
Another big reason wildlife’s struggling is because a lot of us have lost our understanding of nature, so we don’t really know what activities are harmful - for example using pesticides, or dropping litter. Through our regular Environment section we also hope to reconnect our readers with nature, highlighting local experts, ideas, and action you can get involved with.
Moving forward
We’ve still got some work to do on our indirect emissions, mainly around our outsourced supermarket print deliveries and the office supplies we buy, but we’re well on the path to our target of reaching net zero (reducing and balancing both our direct and indirect emissions) by 2025.
If you’ve got any specific questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to email our Partnerships Manager and sustainability lead Adam Pickering on adam.pickering(AT)leftlion.co.uk.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
