Climate positive by design
Turn the carbon footprint of your work into warmer homes, lower bills and greener places
Every project produces carbon. People travel, buildings are heated, digital systems use energy and services consume materials.
Large businesses employ specialist sustainability teams. Most charities, community organisations and smaller public services do not have that capacity—even when they want to respond seriously to the climate emergency.
Barefoot Research and Evaluation has developed a practical methodology to close that gap.
From activity to action
We calculate the carbon produced by a project/activity, or by an organisation as a whole, using recognised government and industry standards.
We then help the organisation:
- Reduce emissions at source
- Calculate the residual carbon footprint
- Create a carbon-neutral or climate-positive budget line
- Identify credible opportunities for local environmental investment
- Develop a Carbon Neutral and Climate Positive Policy
- Monitor and report what has been achieved
This means climate action can be designed and funded from the beginning rather than added as an aspiration at the end.
From a carbon calculation to a warmer home
Where emissions cannot yet be eliminated, we help organisations explore evidenced carbon reductions through the retrofitting of social housing.
Investment in insulation, efficient heating and clean-energy measures can reduce household energy use while creating significant local social value.
A project’s unavoidable carbon footprint can help produce:
- Warmer and more energy-efficient homes
- Lower household energy costs
- Reduced fuel poverty
- Better health and wellbeing
- Local employment and skills
- Carbon reductions within the communities where the organisation works
Instead of disappearing into a remote offsetting scheme, environmental investment can improve local people’s lives.
Going beyond carbon neutrality
An organisation can balance its residual emissions to become carbon neutral or invest beyond its calculated footprint to become climate positive.
Barefoot can also help organisations explore biodiversity credits and opportunities to restore habitats on neglected brownfield and former industrial sites. Carbon reductions, biodiversity gains and social value are identified separately, creating a clear account of what the investment has achieved.
Designed for smaller organisations
Our approach can be applied to:
- A grant-funded project
- A commissioned service
- An event or consultation
- A funding application or tender
- A charity’s annual operations
- A wider organisational climate commitment
We undertake the detailed calculations and translate them into clear costs, practical actions and evidence that can be understood by funders, commissioners, trustees and communities.
Small is beautiful
This approach reflects E. F. Schumacher’s idea that economic activity should work at a human scale and improve people’s lives.
A relatively small environmental budget can produce several connected benefits: reducing a project’s climate impact, improving a local home, lowering energy costs and directing investment towards communities that need it.
For Barefoot, small is beautiful means paying attention to the consequences of everyday activity and showing how practical, locally rooted decisions can contribute to much larger change.
Make your next project carbon neutral or design it to become climate positive from the start.