When Trace was founded back in early 2020, co-founders Cat & Jo chose the term ‘climate positive’ to epitomise the status they wanted individuals and businesses to be able to achieve, with the help of their tech platform and tools.

They chose the term ‘climate positive’ because, at the time, it felt like an accurate representation of our offering - to help businesses and individuals make a positive impact on the climate (rather than limiting this to the concept of ‘carbon’ emissions alone). Our approach was, and still is to this day, to be conservative in the way we measure and offset to ensure we have definitely offset at least 100% of a company’s entire footprint, and we plant trees on top of offsetting as an additional avenue for positive impact.

At Trace, we strive to remove the barriers to climate action and a big barrier we see is the use of inconsistent terminology when it comes to describing how business’ should manage their emissions. We want to ensure that the language we use is clearly defined, in line with what is considered ‘best practice’, and importantly, is widely understood by both businesses and consumers. Why is this important? Because clarity in language allows for widespread adoption by businesses and informed decision-making by consumers.

How the language has shifted

Over the past two years as Trace has grown and evolved, so has the awareness and understanding of terminology like climate positive, carbon neutral and net-zero. We have actively observed a shift in the language used in our industry - by our peers and respected experts in carbon management and environmental consulting - whereby definitions for key terms are becoming clearer and more consistently applied.

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‘Carbon neutral’ has emerged as one of the best-known and understood terms when describing the act of a company offsetting 100% of its carbon emissions. 

‍‘Climate positive’ is now increasingly used as the term to describe when a business has gone ‘above and beyond’ net-zero - i.e. they have not only neutralised their own emissions through reduction and offsetting but are also giving back to the planet in order to have a net-positive impact.

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Because of this shift, we have reflected on how we use the term ‘climate positive’ at Trace - particularly when it comes to the ‘badge’ our business customers receive annually after measuring and offsetting their emissions with us. In light of the broader shifts in the terminology used, we feel it’s now most accurate to describe businesses (and individuals) who are at the start of their journey to net-zero and are yet to undertake significant emission reduction activities, as ‘carbon neutral’, rather than ‘climate positive’.

The decision to make this shift was not taken lightly, however, the entire Trace team felt it was important to do this as part of our commitment to radical transparency. This is about more than just changing the words we use - it’s about demonstrating that we are willing to acknowledge when we need to revise our approach to doing things in order to ensure we’re keeping up with what experts would consider is ‘best in class’. It’s about ensuring that the language we give your business to use is reflective of what other companies leading the way on a journey to net-zero are also using.