ARM is certified carbon neutral

Last year, we pledged to become carbon neutral and we’ve done it. ARM has officially been certified a NoCO2 business. 

View our certificate here.

It’s been just over a year since we joined with architects from around Australia to declare a climate emergency.

As a founding signatory to Australian Architects Declare, we recognised the need for a collective shift in how we envision and create sustainable buildings, cities and infrastructure. We couldn’t do this without first getting our own house in order.

We committed to following a three-step process toward carbon neutrality:

  1. Step 1 was switching to 100% certified Green Power by the end of January 2020. Done.

  2. Step 2 was a carbon audit by 30th June. Done.

  3. Step 3 was achieving total carbon neutrality by 30th December. Done!

Steps two and three involved commissioning a carbon audit from the Carbon Reduction Institute to assess our carbon footprint and help us identify strategies to reduce it. The report indicated that most of our C02 output comes from three things: flights, electricity, and cost of services.

Using the report, we identified clear pathways for making sustainable changes. Through the NoC02 program, we have committed to two carbon offset projects to counter the unavoidable emissions we incur.

We chose our carbon offset programs conscientiously, after thoroughly considering a range of environmental and socio-cultural factors.

“Without doing the audit you don’t understand what your carbon footprint is, and without understanding that you can’t do anything about it. It’s the first necessary step that everyone needs to take, and you can encourage others to do the same.”

Garth Mulholland, Environmental Programs Advisor, The Carbon Reduction Institute

Cookstoves in developing nations

This carbon-offset project disseminates energy efficient wood and charcoal cookstoves throughout Peru, Uganda, Cambodia and China to reduce household dependency on traditional biomass fuels, lowering greenhouse gas consumption per household by an average 36%.

The Cookstoves project has the added socio-cultural benefits of elevating standards of living, relieving pressure on local forests, improving livelihoods in small communities, and reducing the prevalence of respiratory disease, particularly for at-risk women and children.

 

India: Clean Energy from Biomass

Our second carbon-offset project implements technologies in industrial plants so they can to use agricultural waste or biomass fuels to generate power, rather than coal.

This has the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building and encouraging the development and implementation of renewable energy across India, creating additional income for farmers from agricultural waste, supporting jobs, and empowering the region through self-sustaining, environmentally friendly technology.

 

Apart from offsetting our carbon, we save energy by occupying offices with generous natural light, we recycle paper, electronic and kitchen wastes, we encourage staff to cycle to work (about 50% of us cycle on any given day) and we have cyclists’ end-of-trip facilities.

We are passionate and firm in our ongoing commitment to tackling climate change and the ecological losses of our time. This is part of that commitment.