We’re stoked to announce our latest partnership with CarbonTrail. CarbonTrail is a New Zealand-based carbon reporting software company. Offering a technology platform that helps small medium businesses to measure, offset and reduce their carbon emissions using a company's invoice data. CarbonTrail partnered with Hitch to complete the suite of emissions they can help Small Medium businesses to measure, offset and reduce. CarbonTrail currently measures most emissions, however, as they rely on invoice data to estimate emissions they can’t include the employee commute as it isn’t a business expense. They recognised that most companies are now wanting to include their commuting emissions in their carbon reporting so saw it as a great opportunity to partner with Hitch. The partnership will now enable their clients to measure, offset and reduce their commuting carbon emissions if they wish.
CarbonTrail was founded by Tom Hallam, a software engineer who has always been passionate about the environment. In 2020 Tom was over from the UK road tripping around New Zealand. As the lockdown was announced, Tom and his wife decided to hunker down in Christchurch. He absolutely fell in love with New Zealand, however was shocked to learn that we have the highest per capita emissions in the world. Combining his previous experience as an engineer and in the finance sector, Tom decided to do something about this grim statistic.
CarbonTrail aims to make it as easy as possible for businesses to understand their CO2 emissions. They use AI to categorise spend and associated emissions factors, making it simple to see where emissions are coming from. CarbonTrail is available in the Xero app store or through MYOB. If a company doesn’t use Xero or MYOB, they have an API integration into their product and support CSV uploads.
One of the key features of CarbonTrail is their ability to be granular. They support over 200 types of emissions categories, including aquaculture and production of stainless steel, and have emissions factors based on top ANSIC codes in New Zealand. Coming soon, businesses will be able to capture specific activity data for expenses like flights, fuel, electricity, waste and more. This gives the highest accuracy possible, and paves the way for streamlined external verification of the numbers the tool generates.
CarbonTrail also offers basic suggested reduction initiatives. They recognise the importance of reducing emissions so this is an area that their product team is honing in on. They are currently building the ability to benchmark your organisation against your industry which is a useful yardstick.
The company's software is already being used by a variety of businesses, including Heilala Vanilla, The New Zealand Institute of Economists, and Kin Recruitment. Their sweet spot is small to medium office based organisations, but CarbonTrail can be applied broadly across many industries.
If you want to get an estimate of your carbon emissions, CarbonTrail now offers a free edition that you can access here. The tool uses your previous year financial information to show you some high level estimates. To access the full tool, they then are willing to provide 20% off!
In the future, CarbonTrail aims to map every kiwi small medium enterprises supply chain and make it as easy as possible for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. By partnering with Hitch, they are taking a step towards achieving that goal. Hitch provides a platform that enables businesses to more understand their commuting emissions and provides tailored recommendations on how they might reduce these.
CarbonTrail and Hitch's partnership is a big win for small medium businesses looking to measure and reduce their carbon footprint. With CarbonTrail's overarching emissions platform and Hitch's easy way of measuring commuting carbon emissions, businesses can take meaningful steps towards reducing their overall impact on the environment.