I direct REI’s CSR program and want to offer some background about our GHG emissions work and our decision to use offsets. As with most sustainability issues, there is often a lot more to the story.

In general, we focus on real GHG reductions as our way to achieve our aspiration of being Climate Neutral by 2020, but the case of REI Adventures is a good example of finding an impact we didn’t expect, and then finding a creative solution to it.

Why do we include REI Adventures anyway?

While there is a lot of talk about “carbon footprint”, it might be surprising to learn that the first step is figuring out one’s GHG inventory is to decide what’s “in” and what’s “out.” World Resources Institute (WRI) www.ghgprotocol.org gives guidance on counting direct emissions (smoke stacks and tailpipes) and electricity, but after that, companies are largely on their own to choose what they count or don’t count (which is why reporting and transparency is so important). At REI, the first 2 categories (Scope I and II) are only 28% of our inventory. The other 72% of what we count comes from our own decisions about what’s “in” (scope III). This includes things like employee commuting (14%) and shipping packages to our internet customers (6%). Here’s the whole pie chart of what we count: http://www.rei.com/aboutrei/csr/2008/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html.

When we created our first GHG inventory in 2006 we decided to count the flights of REI Adventure customers. We reasoned that although we usually didn’t book the air travel, we sponsored the trip, so we counted all the impacts. We were surprised when it turned out to be 1/3 of our total carbon footprint.

The next thing we faced was a simple question: If the trips have such a large impact, should we sponsor them? Ultimately we decided that organizing trips to great adventure destinations supported the REI mission and we could do “good” by helping communities see more economic benefits from tourism than through resource extraction. It also creates cross culture connections and helps our travelers become stewards of great places all over the world – but, the air travel has impacts that we had to own.

So what are we doing about it?

In almost every other category – energy, product transportation, etc. -we are working on reducing the source of emissions. Finding creative business ways to switch to renewable energy for example, benefits the business and the environment. Since we couldn’t change the fuel in the aircraft we had to find another way to do something about the impacts of our member’s REI Adventure trips, so we partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation www.b-e-f.org. We purchase Renewable Energy Certificates certified under the Green-e climate program www.green-e.org/getcert_ghg.shtml. In addition to off-setting the impact of flights, we are creating market demand and supporting renewable energy which has the additional benefit of encouraging a market shift for green power.

Kevin Hagen
Director Corporate Social Responsibility, REI