FAQs

Climate Pets is the world’s first community of climate positive pets. A community-driven platform that shares effective ways to reduce and offset the carbon ‘pawprint’ of our four-legged friends. Climate Pets is an initiative from the community interest company Global Solidarity Foundation.

If you sign up to one of our Supercat or Superdog memberships, on top of supporting our awareness-raising, non-profit work, you’ll:

• plant trees every month
• offset the carbon pawprint of your cat or dog
• get exclusive discounts at a range of planet-friendly dog and cat businesses
• help make monthly micro-grants to selected climate justice projects globally

You can sign up to Climate Pets as a Climate Explorer for free and benefit from our fabulous community, discounts and special offers, and guidance on how to live the most sustainable life with your pet.

If you want to go one step further, you can support our work as well as make your pet a bona fide climate superhero. From £5/month, you’ll help us continue to run this platform. On top of that, we offset the carbon pawprint of your pet, plant trees and make donations to climate justice initiatives.

For cats and dogs, we offer 2 membership levels. Become a Climate Explorer for free and benefit from our resources, discounts and community. Become a Climate Superhero to help support our non-profit work, as well as get carbon offsetting, tree-planting and climate justice donations.

If you sign up to make an annual donation to Climate Pets, you’ll ‘pay’ the equivalent of 10 months for 12 months of carbon offsetting and other perks! Just to say thanks!

You can end your membership anytime by cancelling your donation via your Donorbox account. If you need any help doing this, please reach out to us at [email protected].

Climate Pets offers a wide range of discounts from leading sustainable cat and dog companies. You can find the full list of companies here. If you’re a member, you’ll receive updates email on the hottest treats.

If you’d like to suggest a company we should partner with, email us at [email protected].

With our Climate Superhero membership, you contribute to our tree-planting projects.

Our tree-planting efforts are in partnership with Trees for the Future (trees.org), one of the world’s leading specialists in sustainable land use and agroforestry.

We love working with Trees. Their 30+ years in the business means they know what works, and what doesn’t. Their highly-focused programmes go beyond sticking a seed in the ground. Through grassroots work with thousands of farming families across nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa, they’re addressing both climatic and economic challenges. Find out more at trees.org.

Humans love gifts, but so do dogs and cats.

Whilst there are lots of possible gifts out there, this one’s different. With a Climate Pets membership, your gift keeps on giving every month for planet, people and pets.

Your gift will support certified climate projects worldwide, helping to tackle climate change.

The lucky recipient of this gift will also get access to discounts from the leading sustainable cat and dog companies.

What’s not to love?

You can find the full list of companies on our Discounts page. If you’re a member, you’ll also receive email updates on available discounts.

We only partner with companies that have a proven record of taking climate change seriously. Companies that are part of the solution, not the problem. This means, business partners offer products that are more sustainable than other products on the market.

Are Climate Pets’ partner brands perfect? Most likely not! Are any of us? That said, all our partners represent a purchasing option that is more sustainable than alternatives in their industry.

Most of our partner brands offer food alternatives that are more sustainable than what is available on the conventional market. And since food is the biggest factor when it comes to our pets’ carbon footprint, buying through our partners helps the climate.

Other products, such as toys, are also produced more sustainably and are therefore – if bought only when really needed – also better for the environment than conventional products. Furthermore, as far as possible, we always encourage upcycling, sharing, lending, mending and reusing toys over buying new ones!

We’re always keen to hear directly from companies helping tackle climate change and working to change the pet industry for good! Send an email to [email protected] and we’ll be in touch to discuss how we might work together.

For our science-based calculation of our beloved pets’ carbon pawprint, we have analysed different life-cycle-assessments of cats and dogs. Read more about these assessment on our blog!

The carbon pawprint is the amount of tCO2e (tonnes of CO2 equivalent) produced over the period of one year by a dog or a cat, much like a human’s carbon footprint.

By emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases, humans, dogs and cats are changing the climate on our planet. Climate change is causing average temperatures to rise, extreme weather events such as storms, droughts and hot summers to increase, our glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also predicts that continued climate change will slow economic growth globally, threaten food security, exacerbate social inequalities, and may lead to the risk of conflict and increased migration.

Global warming must therefore ideally be limited to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Only in this way do we stand a chance of protecting planet, people and pets. This means that we must stop the emission of global greenhouse gases. We can only achieve this if everyone makes a contribution. Popular and impactful actions include going without meat and/or animal products, using the train or bus to travel and only flying if absolutely necessary, switching to green electricity, buying regional, seasonal and organic products and much more. Find out more on our blog.

But there are certain things in life that we cannot or do not want to do without. These include our animal companions. However, since our dogs and cats also emit significant greenhouse gas, it’s also important to reduce their carbon pawprint in the first place and to compensate for the rest.

The principle of offsetting is based on the idea that it is not decisive for the climate where greenhouse gases are emitted or avoided. Emissions caused in one place can therefore be saved in another place. Since avoiding emissions oneself is always preferable to offsetting them later, voluntary offsetting should be the last but nonetheless an important step after avoiding and reducing.

The offsetting itself then takes place via so-called emission certificates. These guarantee that the same amount of emissions will be offset again in a corresponding climate protection project. It is important that the climate protection project would not have existed without the compensation mechanism (an assurance commonly referred to as ‘additionality’).

We select our offset projects as carefully as possible. We have partnered with FairClimateFund, a project developer whose projects meet the very best standards out there, including Gold Standard and Fairtrade, to guarantee our guardians, heroes and superheroes make the biggest difference in protecting communities and the environment. In addition, all our projects support a number of UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Gold Standard is a certification for carbon credits that was founded by a group of NGOs, such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It stands to represent the interests of civil society in support of their vision for ‘climate security and sustainable development for all.’

It is currently the most stringent standard for carbon credits. The carbon reduction of each climate project is carefully verified and it is determined whether this reduction would not have taken place without the project (called ‘additionality’). It also looks at whether there are no negative environmental impacts, whether local communities are sufficiently involved in the project, and whether local households benefit socio-economically.

Fairtrade Climate Credits are credits from Gold Standard projects that are also certified under the Fairtrade Climate Standard. The Fairtrade Climate Standard was developed by Fairtrade International in collaboration with Gold Standard.

Projects accredited with the Fairtrade Climate Standard follow Fairtrade principles where local communities play an active role and own the project and the carbon credits themselves. For each credit sold, the producers receive a Fairtrade premium, which in turn is invested in climate adaptation measures. Finally, a minimum price guarantees that the costs of the project are covered.

Buyers of Fairtrade climate credits must be able to demonstrate that they themselves are taking active measures to reduce carbon emissions.

• People receive a guaranteed minimum price for the credits, which covers all the costs of the project.
• Local people are closely involved in the project organisation and own the carbon credits they produce themselves.
• Finally, they receive a Fairtrade premium. They invest this income in climate adaptation measures

Nope.

As trees play a central role and are key to solving the climate problem, this is something we do additionally as a company, and you do it by signing up as a climate hero or superhero. If you would like to learn more about our tree planting campaigns, please take a look at this blog post.

Prices for compensation measures are not set in stone and depend on project types and locations. As we work with high quality and third party accredited projects, prices for offset measures are on average more expensive than for non-accredited projects. Prices can vary from roughly £10 to £60 per tCO2e.

For our carbon offsetting, we publish retirement certificates each month which show how many tonnes of CO2 have been prevented from going into the atmosphere thanks to the contributions of the Climate Pets community.

Not on it’s own! But we have to work on all possible levels to stop global warming. Therefore, you and your pet can also make a meaningful contribution to help the planet, people and all other pets. And when you consider that there are about 1.5 billion dogs and cats out there, the impact could be huge. Let’s get to work! Sign up here or gift a membership.

There are many other great ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Here we present the six ways that are particularly close to our hearts and guaranteed to have a big impact.

• Less is more. If you consume less as a matter of principle, you consume fewer greenhouse gases.
• Flying is a known climate offender – so if you can do without it, you should definitely do so.
• Try vegetarian, go vegan! Clearly, if you give up meat and/or animal products, you are not only supporting animal rights but also making a significant contribution to the climate.
• Switch to green electricity – this way you support renewable energies and we gradually get away from oil. This is also good for the climate!
• Offset CO2 emissions that cannot be prevented – you support projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Vote for leaders that care about the planet, people and pets.

At Climate Pets, we take climate change very seriously. That’s why we choose our carbon offsetting projects as carefully as possible to guarantee the highest possible standards. What’s more, as a company, we are constantly trying to reduce our own carbon emissions. Our team primarily keep to a plant-based diet, don’t fly, and we offset our remaining emissions – including those of our dogs and cats! Whenever possible, we additionally support charities for animals, the planet or the community, and our tree planting adds even more value to the planet.