What is a Restorative Business, and is Kelp the answer?

Becoming a Restorative Business

To be a ‘sustainable business’ today means more than keeping up with your office recycling. There is a growing need for companies to change the way they’ve traditionally operated, set real goals to reduce their environmental footprint, and share their outcomes. As a Certified B Corporation, transparency is important to us, and it’s part of Fairware’s efforts to be a restorative company that comes from the B Corp Ethos, “do less harm.”

We now know that aiming for carbon neutrality isn’t enough to tackle the climate crisis. So, what can we do to live and breathe restorative business practices while avoiding greenwashing?

We are developing solutions on our journey to being a restorative business. We seek suppliers committed to decarbonizing their businesses and sourcing products that have a lower carbon impact (or are certified carbon neutral). Moreover, recently we launched a partnership with veritree – Announcement: Fairware x veritree.

Verifiable Restorative Solutions

When introduced in the late 90s, carbon offsets, such as tree planting, appeared as a game-changer to help corporations with their need to balance and address emissions. But without traceability, buying offsets didn’t always mean their efforts to redistribute emissions worked.

We investigated restorative planting, and its focus on traceability resonated with our team. veritree is designed to improve transparency and trust through data and tools that revitalize ecosystems, strengthen communities, and build climate solutions. veritree currently runs its global restoration network via on-the-ground monitoring, using mobile devices in the hands of local community members to measure impact and engage sponsors and collaborators on their impacts through the veritree platform.

In partnering with veritree, we believe in doing right and making a positive difference for the planet. There is no claim for carbon neutrality but instead, encouragement to acknowledge the complex dynamic between nature, ecosystems, and people.

While we figure out ways to address our Scope 3 emissions with supplier partners, our veritree partnership enables us to invest in restorative practices close to home.

Fairware x veritree = Kelp

We’re excited to begin our kelp planting journey. For this project, veritree works closely with Coastal Kelp and the Sechelt First Nations (shíshálh swíya) to restore kelp forest along their territory, Hotham Sound and Powell River in British Columbia, Canada. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Cultural Importance

Kelp holds great cultural and ecological significance for Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest. Kelp has been used for centuries as a food source, medicine, and material for crafts and ceremonies. These forests also provide important habitats for a wide variety of marine life, which has sustained Indigenous fishing practices for generations. Today, many Indigenous communities are working to restore and protect kelp beds as part of their cultural heritage and efforts to promote ocean health.

Habitat

Kelp forests are underwater habitats made up of many different species of kelp that form canopies over the seafloor. Kelp forests thrive in cool, nutrient-rich waters along rocky coastlines in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. These towering underwater forests harbour thousands of marine species, providing food and shelter, much like forests on land.

Recovery

Globally, over 40 percent of kelp forests have declined over the past five decades because of climate change, overexploitation, and pollution. These Kelp forests support biodiversity, coastal fisheries, and livelihoods and have the potential as a significant carbon sink. In British Columbia, kelp forests also provide important habitats for commercially and culturally valuable species such as herring, salmon, and rockfish, as well as endangered northern abalone, in addition to being central to the traditions and well-being of Indigenous coastal communities.

New and innovative techniques will be used to seed bull kelp and sugar kelp. This project will produce millions of Kelp Sporophytes planted on a mix of line and green gravel in the Indigenous waters in British Columbia, Canada.

We’ve made our second donation in preparation for winter planting. We’re committed to planting 10 kelp for every order we invoice. Our goal is to plant over 80,000 kelp in the next 5 years.

By partnering with Fairware for your custom merch programs, you’re going to #helpthekelp.