BECOMING A CARBON NEGATIVE E-CIGARETTE BRAND
Over the last 10+ years at SMOKO E-Cigarettes, we have worked hard to help our customers kick the cigarette habit and switch to something that is dramatically less harmful and certainly more affordable than smoking.
During that time, we have prevented over 600,000,000+ cigarettes from being consumed and our customers have saved over £320m of their hard-earned money from literally going up in smoke.
While we have hit these impressive milestones with our customers’ help, we wanted to ensure we are doing everything we can to reduce our company’s impact on the world around us. So we have taken a look at our environmental footprint and CO2 emissions which our business activities cause.
OFFSETTING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT AND BECOMING CARBON NEGATIVE
SMOKO HAS OFFSET 3X ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT SINCE 2019
Working with our partners from CarbonFootprint.com, we were able to calculate our carbon emissions footprint from 2019 to the end of December 2021.
Looking at everything from our electricity consumption for our office and shop, fuel for our vehicles, emissions from shipping our stock around the world and even the emissions for the delivery vans that deliver SMOKO all the way to your front door.
From 2019 to 2021, we over-estimated our footprint to be approximately 231 tonnes of CO2.
But becoming carbon neutral didn’t feel like we were doing enough. So we have offset 757 tonnes (that's over 3x our carbon footprint) of CO2 from 2019 to 2021 and will continue to offset our footprint in the years to come.
We are doing this in the following 2 ways.
SMOKO E-CIGARETTES SUPPORTING CARBON OFFSET PROJECTS
OUR CARBON OFFSET PROJECTS ARE AROUND THE WORLD
Firstly, working with Ecologi, we are contributing to carbon offset programs around the world. Ranging from a Wind farm project in Turkey, a landfill gas capture project in Thailand, a solar power project in India, protection of the Amazon rain forest in Peru and Brazil and a landfill gas extraction facility in Istanbul.
As of December 2021, SMOKO has prevented over 757 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
That is the equivalent of removing 1,879,854 miles driven by an average car annually!
SMOKO E-CIGARETTES SPPORTS TREE PLANTING PROJECTS TO SEQUESTER MORE CO2
SUPPORTING LONG TERM CARBON OFFSET PROJECTS
The second part of reducing our footprint involves planting trees. But not just any trees!
We love mangrove trees as they capture over 4 times the amount of carbon per acre than temperate and tropical rain forests! As well, over ¾ of all tropical fish rely on a mangrove’s root system for nurseries and shelter. So the carbon emissions they will sequester will happen in the future AND provide vital new nurseries for inconceivable numbers of invertebrates, fish, birds, and more.
As of December 2021, SMOKO’s contributions have helped to plant 27,609 “Avicinia marina” mangrove trees on the north west coast of Madagascar. Each tree will sequester 0.3T of CO2 in their lifetime.
So the small mangrove forest we have started should offset 8,283 tonnes in the years to come – that will be the equivalent of removing 20,549,379 miles worth of car journeys or driving around the Earth’s equator almost 825 times!!!
"THIS COMMITMENT TO OFFSET OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT WILL NOT JUST BE A ONE OFF GESTURE. IN FACT, SMOKO BEING CARBON NEGATIVE WILL CONTINUE EVERY YEAR MOVING FORWARD."
MAKING SMALL CHANGES AROUND THE OFFICE
LOTS OF SMALL STEPS MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE ENVIRONMENTALLY
Offsetting our carbon footprint is only part of what we are doing.
We looked at all of the things we use to run SMOKO on a day to day basis. Last year we switched all of our lights to LEDs in the office and shop. we make sure all of our printing is on recycled paper, we recycle our printer cartridges and packaging and the padded envelopes we use to send your orders are made with 50% recycled material and can be 100% recycled.
As a local business, all of our full time staff live in Tunbridge Wells and walk to work every day. So the only footprints our staff make on their daily commute are the ones they leave on the sidewalk!
E-CIGARETTE BRAND SWITCHING TO 100% RENEWAL ENERGY
WE'VE SWITCHED TO GREEN ENERGY SUPPLIERS
It takes a lot of electricity to keep the lights on here at SMOKO. Previously, our energy supplier for our office and shop could only provide 30% of our electricity requirements from renewable resources while the remaining 70% was through coal plants. For us that was not good enough.
So from January 1st 2020, we have moved to Octopus Energy and Bulb Energy which allows us to get all of our electricity from 100% renewable sources.
Now all of our electricity we use on a day to day basis is generated through Wind and Solar farms, Hydro Electricity, Biomass and Anaerobic Digestion projects around the UK.
SMOKO E-CIGARETTES HAS PARTNERED WITH GREEN SUPPLIERS
WORKING WITH CARBON NEUTRAL AND CARBON NEGATIVE SUPPLIERS WHEN WE CAN
Beyond our day to day in the office, we are always trying to work with suppliers who have a similar approach as we do when it comes to reducing our impact on the environment.
Our main courier company DPD is carbon neutral and since 2018 has ensured 100% of their transport and energy consumption emissions are offset (the equivalent of 997,569 tonnes of CO2). They have also taken steps to reduce the carbon emissions by 15.2% per parcel they deliver compared to their 2013 levels.
Now you might not think that websites would be bad for the environment but the data centres that house the computers which keep the Internet running use A LOT of electricity! Historically many of these could have been powered by coal and natural gas power plants which are big greenhouse gas emitters.
Our website partner Shopify is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world. They have taken some incredible steps to reducing their footprint to zero. In 2018, they moved all of their data servers to Google Cloud which is 100% carbon neutral. And Shopify are also committing $1M USD annually to additional carbon sequestration projects to ensure their activities are carbon negative as well!
TAKING THE SLOW BOAT - SWITCHING FROM AIR TO SEA FREIGHT
TAKING THE SLOW BOAT REDUCES CARBON FOOTPRING BY 65%
Transport in any business's supply chain can have a big impact on the carbon footprint that they leave behind. We recognized that shipping our suppliers via air freight was having a bigger impact than we wanted.
In 2020, we made the decision to start send as much of our supplies via sea freight as we could. Kg to kg, Sea Freight leave 98% less carbon footprint compared to Air Freight. So in the last year alone, we have been able to further reduce our carbon footprint for through our shipping activities by over 65%!
Logistically, this adds a lot of additional time to our order cycle, but once we made the change, taking the slow boat was definitely a greener step in the right direction!
RECYCLING YOUR SMOKO E-CIGARETTES
HELP US MAKE A BIGGER DIFFERENCE
We do encourage all of our customers to collect their used E-Cigarette and VAPE Refills and send them back to us for recycling. And as our rechargeable batteries are lithium-ion, they can safely be recycled at battery recycling points at most major grocery stores or you can send them back to us and we will do it for you.
You can send us your used refills and batteries to;
SMOKO, 18 Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells, KENT, TN1 2PT
All of our packaging is also recyclable so please make sure you pop it into your recycling bins at home!
MOVING INTO THE GREENER FUTURE
Nobody is perfect and we know there are still some things that we can do to continue to reduce our footprint. But these are just some of the steps we are taking from our end to ensure that as we continue to deliver your SMOKO to you as quickly and efficiently as possible, we are reducing our impact on the environment as a carbon negative e-cigarette brand.
We thank you for your ongoing support!
Daisy Hicks and Mike Cameron – Co-Founders – SMOKO E-Cigarettes