hipSwan Planet: carbon-neutral shipping
hipSwan has enhanced our carbon neutrality! Thanks to Shopify's Planet App we now offer carbon-neutral shipping and support the technologies necessary for future-proofing the planet.
What does it mean to be carbon neutral?
Carbon neutral means that the emissions an entity (business, organization, individual, product, or service) produces has been "balanced" by funding an equal amount of savings elsewhere in the world. Adding solar panels to your home, or switching to an electric vehicle are examples of things you can do to reduce your carbon dioxide output.
How the Planet App works
We chose the Planet App because it supports solutions that accelerate technology and innovation that actually work. This makes it easy for us to remove estimated carbon emissions from order shipments while providing crucial peace of mind to sustainability-focused customers.
The App uses data from each order's shipping tracking route. It runs this data through their model to calculate how much carbon dioxide is emitted from the shipping process.
Carbon removal vs offsets
hipSwan has been carbon neutral since our inception and we also plant one tree for every order, through our partnership with TreeSisters, a global reforestation nonprofit.
What's new is that Shopify's Planet App focuses on carbon removal rather than offsetting carbon with forest protection. Our contributions help fund some of the most promising carbon removal projects — from direct air capture companies like Climeworks and Heirloom, to enhanced rock weathering projects like Lithos Carbon.
How does direct air capture work?
Companies like Climeworks and Heirloom use a technology called 'direct air capture' to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air. When the removed CO₂ is combined with permanent storage, it allows the removal of excess and legacy emissions, which can no longer contribute to climate change.
Why do we need carbon removal?
The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already dangerous and it's still growing. We can and must cut emissions rapidly. We need every tool at our disposal to prevent the worst impacts of climate change — emissions reductions must be ramped up, and this is the clear number one priority. CO2 is the main physical driver of human-caused climate change, and a large fraction of all CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years. By cleaning up that CO2 and eventually drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels, carbon removal can help reduce or even reverse climate change.