We’ve upped our efforts to reverse climate change, by offsetting our emissions to claim carbon neutrality.

We’re doing this, because it’s the right thing to do. As part of our Best for the World 2025 strategy we’re commited to furthering reducing our emissions and moving toward a more sustainable way of doing business.

Join us on the journey.

As part of the journey to offset our global carbon footprint, we have invested in carbon credits generated from high-impact projects in Australia and China where we have our operations and factories, as well as supporting renewable energy generation in India. Each project delivers economic and social benefits for communities in addition to mitigating environmental impact.

We work with Toitu Envirocare, a carbon certification company, who verify our carbon measurements to achieve 'Toitu carbonzero certification' and help us identify ways to reduce emissions.

The first step was to measure. Greenhouse gas emissions are grouped under the names Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3.

• Scope 1 are the emissions that come directly from the business. We don’t own a vehicle fleet and lease our stores so our Scope 1 emissions are limited.
• Scope 2 covers indirect energy emissions like the electricity we purchase from power companies for our store network, distribution centres and offices .
• Scope 3 are emissions that occur in our supply chain beyond our organisational boundary including logistics like employee travel and transport of stock.

In terms of our organisational footprint, the biggest impact comes from transporting our products, so we track the emissions of all our shipments from port to port. Tracking this data will help us to streamline our operations, reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce our costs.

Our organisational carbon footprint in Australia is much higher than in New Zealand. This is a reflection of our larger Australian operational footprint and Australia’s predominantly coal-based energy supply compared to New Zealand, where approximately 80% is renewable.

In addition to its targeted offsetting strategy, we have been tracking its carbon emissions for close to a decade and even through periods of strong global growth, we have managed to reduce our emissions total by 9%, and 34% per store on 2012 levels through installing solar power, Green Star buildings and energy efficiency projects.

We opened our first 100% solar-powered store in Blackburn, Victoria. This follows a solar panel installation in our Melbourne distribution centre in 2016. Kathmandu Project Manager Dean Smith says the Blackburn store was a good solar project because it is a stand-alone store. “Because many stores are located in large shopping centres, it won’t be possible for solar power to be rolled out across the entire store network, but we intend to assess which of our stores can be adapted for solar power in the future to help reach our netzero carbon target by 2025.” The system has a solar battery generator that’s able to deliver 100% of the store’s annual energy or up to 92,000 kilowatt-hours. The system will eliminate up to 124 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions overall. The array will use the battery on overcast days and for backup power. A live feed of the store’s solar activities will be displayed on a monitor within the store, allowing customers to view power generation versus usage.