Carbon Removed

We're a company focused on tackling the climate crisis and making a better world for the future. A future that should be enjoyed by everyone equally - regardless of race or gender.

To that end we have decided to donate $5 to organisations tackling racial prejudice for every subscriber choosing to remove their carbon footprint.

Subscribe today to remove your carbon emissions and support the fight for equality.

CarbonRemoved.com/social-justice/

It's true what they say, a lot of your initial customers will be friends and family (where relevant) but I was surprised to see how few this number actually was.

Support has been vocally overwhelming with close family willing to contact friends, neighbours and groups to help promote the ability to remove their carbon footprint. When it comes to paying, however, these friends have preferred to offer advice rather than parting with hard earned cash.

Maybe it's us - we're early and untrustworthy. Maybe it's them - they don't understand or care enough to remove their carbon emissions. Either way we decided to try and engage others online.

After connecting with some climate orientated communities on Reddit to discuss reductions versus removal we were even more disheartened to receive some push-back against our approach which some people deemed pointless and too commercial (instead humans should reduce as much as possible but not pay to reverse the existing damage).

However two weeks later we saw a trickle of new subscribers coming from these discussions. Silent voyeurs who disagreed with the feedback we had received so much that they were convinced to start a subscription.

I would encourage everyone, regardless of business to connect and be open with these specialist communities related to what you're doing. Don't be too discouraged as even by receiving negative comments we saw positive growth.

Okay - so it's one of the founders... but this was an important step of going live: Testing the end-to-end payment interface and making sure other people could also pay.

I'm a fan of "eating your own dog food" - if you're building a product try and use it yourself so I'm happy to say that I am compensating my footprint via CarbonRemoved.com

One of the main pieces of feedback we received was: "you're too expensive".

So, we went back to our spreadsheet and wondered how we could adjust our plans accordingly to lower the cost while still providing enough carbon removal to compensate an entire footprint.

Full details will be the subject of a longer blog post but ultimately by reducing the percentage apportioned to direct air capture methods (which - as the technology is in its infancy - is very expensive) and more towards compensating through tree planting.

Our plans now start at $6! So hopefully there is something for anyone hoping to make a difference.

Our business model relies on carbon removal partners, often selling B2B (and thus inaccessible to consumers). Without these partners it would be impossible to offer our true value to the customer.

After being in months of negotiations with a direct carbon capture partner, motivation was low but we decided to hunt for our first tree planting opportunity.

Enter OneTreePlanted - a registered US based charity who were very happy to have a video call with us and over a few weeks iron out the details and join our cause.

With the dashboard in it's infancy feedback was poor and recurring users were limited.

After reading some excellent books and taking some online courses we decided to refine the idea and remove all the free "fluff" that - while contributing to the features of the business - didn't add any monetary value.

We ended up settling a simple subscription service to help users compensate and remove their carbon footprint.

It was time to build a new landing page.

After trying and failing to find a way to track my carbon emissions I decided - in true software engineer fashion - there was a gap in the market and I should build my own.

Unfortunately at this time I was still in full time employment so lacked the time to further develop the idea but that would soon change.