We measured our carbon footprint for the first time – and saw how many things we are already doing right

This year we partnered with On Purpose – a career change programme that guides organisations towards a healthy and more sustainable economic system. Their Associate Maria Fletcher spent 6 months with us looking at our supply chain, measuring our carbon footprint, and helping us create a vision for the future where we can become net zero.

So, what is carbon footprint and scopes?

Carbon footprint means how much greenhouse gas emissions Breadwinners is responsible for. It is not just how much electricity we use in the office – our carbon footprint includes all the emissions in our supply chain starting from farmers who grew the crops that were then milled and baked to become bread and then delivered to the market stalls and our wholesale clients. There are many organisations that emitted greenhouse gas emissions along our supply chain – and they are counted as our emissions too.

In carbon accounting emissions are divided into Scopes – scope 1 means carbon emissions released into the atmosphere from sources owned by a reporting company (such as own boilers or own vehicles). Scope 2 includes emissions from electricity, gas, heating and cooling in an organisation’s office. And scope 3 (the most complicated one) accounts for all emissions within a company’s value chain that are not controlled by that company.

How did we measure it?

Every activity has a footprint – whether you turned on a switch, baked a loaf in an over or drove a van to a Sunday market.

Let’s take an example. When a van drives 5 miles it emits some greenhouse gases – and someone (normally, a government department like DEFRA or DESNZ) has already measured how much a van of this size emits per mile. They issue a table of what is called emissions factors where we can find a factor that represents how much greenhouse gases is emitted per mile. The basic rule of calculating carbon footprint is to take a unit of activity data and multiply it by an emissions factor that is relevant to that activity. So, to know emissions per route a van follows we should multiply the emissions factor by the number of miles driven. Then we calculate all the miles for all the routes per year – and we can find out our emissions from deliveries per year. The same logic works with other activities.

The challenging part is to get all the necessary data about all the operations of your organisation and its supply chain. And to make sure you got the right emissions factor for it.

Sometimes it is tricky to collect all the data from your suppliers, especially when they are SMEs and have limited resources in terms of time and human capacity. Sometimes they might simply not have the data you need. For example, our mill partner delivers tons of flour to our bakery partner and they don’t monitor how much of that flour delivered is Breadwinners’ part. In such cases there is a spent-based method – to multiply the amount of money you spent on certain goods or services by the emissions factor for these goods or services. An emissions factor in this case represents amount of CO2e emitted per pound spent.

What did we find out?

The biggest part of our carbon emissions comes from the supply chain – scope 3 (and according to Deloitte for many businesses this category accounts for 70% of emissions).

Within scope 3 there is a category that accounts for emissions from the purchased goods – for us it is all the bread and pastry we buy from our trusted bakery. Each loaf represents a long “story” of emissions – from the farmers, growing and using machinery to cultivate and harvest wheat, to the mill where it is cleaned, sifted, ground and packaged, to the truck that delivers the flour – finally, to the bakery where the flour is baked into bread. That is why it is the biggest part of our emissions (41,875.25 kg of CO2e) – and the one we have no control over.

What we can do is make choices of what we buy and who we purchase from. One of the major decisions we made is to only buy certified organic bread. Organic farming avoids synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, promotes healthier soils, protects water systems from chemical runoff, and emits 16%-25% less carbon per kg of product compared to conventional farming. It not only reduces our environmental impact but helps build a more regenerative food system (you can find out more about the benefits of organic flour in this blog post).

We deliberately choose our suppliers that work hard on reducing their own emissions and by doing this reduce our indirect scope 3 emissions. Our two main suppliers – Shipton mill and Celtic bakers - are both powered by renewable energy, significantly lowering the indirect emissions linked to our products.

Shipton mill has been making significant strides towards becoming sustainable: they eliminated plastic packaging from their website retail orders. 80% of their lorries are powered by Euro 6 engines - the cleanest currently available. Offices and water are heated using the excess heat from the milling process. And they also plant lots of trees (have a look at their Torosay rewilding project in Scotland).

Our partner bakery, Celtic bakers, is zero waste – they donate 100% of the food waste to charities. Food waste is responsible for 10% of global emissions and uses 25% of all freshwater - that’s why it is important not to waste food. Zero waste is an important part of our carbon strategy too – we donate 100% of our surplus food to Too Good To Go which already helped us save 35 metric tons of CO₂e overall with 7.89 metric tons of CO₂e in the last year only.

Logistics and distribution is another big part of our carbon footprint (3,029.11 kg of CO2e per year) and the one that represents the biggest opportunity for carbon reduction. Our logistics partner’s wholesale vans are powered by Euro 6 engines and to further reduce emissions, our logistics partner uses route optimisation software for our market deliveries, helping to cut down on unnecessary mileage and fuel consumption. However, diesel vans are still fossil fuel-based. As a next step towards zero-emissions deliveries, we are reviewing options to gradually transition our wholesale and market deliveries to electric vans.

When it comes to our own emissions – our electricity and gas footprint is just 348.3 kg of CO2e a year because we share an office space and come to the office only once a week. Our employee commuting emissions are tiny as well - 186.67 kg of CO2e. All our full-time employees either use public transportation, cycle or walk to work.

What have we learnt and what’s next?

We learnt that what sets us apart is our ability to combine deep social impact with meaningful climate action - proving that it’s possible to run a purpose-driven, commercially viable social enterprise that cares equally for people and the planet.

Breadwinners operates in the food sector, which is responsible for a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Recognising our role in this system, we took decisive steps this year to measure our carbon emissions. There is still work to be done - our carbon footprint assessment has given us a clear picture of our impact and laid the foundation for data-driven reduction plans.

Our work also has a ripple effect. Through our markets, social media, and public-facing messaging, we raise awareness of the links between food, farming, climate change, and displacement. We show our customers and community that everyday choices - like choosing organic bread or cutting food waste - can support a fairer, greener future.