We reduced our carbon foot print
It is very important for us to take the environment into account in all our activities. Interior Architects Gullstén & Inkinen Oy was Finland’s first design office in 2010, which was accepted into WWF’s Green Office network. We have been carbon neutral since 2019. For our part, we want to slow down climate change and strive to do so by creating visually and physically sustainable spaces, favoring environmentally friendly manufacturers and suppliers, and developing space efficiency and taking into account the life cycle of materials.
The company’s carbon footprint
Sustainable development has been central to our company’s operations since its inception. Our carbon footprint for the calendar year 2021 has been calculated in cooperation with Reforest Finland Oy. The calculation is based on the international GHG Protocol standard, which allows companies to determine the greenhouse gas emissions of their operations.
Most of our emissions are caused by the heating of our premises. This makes up about 41% of total emissions. The next largest source of emissions was about 26% of workers’ journeys between home and work. Travel to and from work were minimal due to the corona pandemic. From the comparison year 2019, emissions have been reduced by less than half. The total carbon footprint has dropped from 26.4 CO2e tonnes to 10.8 CO2e tonnes. Our results are really small compared to other companies with the same number of employees that do not have production operations.
According to the final report, Gullstén-Inkinen Design & Architecture operates with very low emissions and large reduction measures are not very easy to implement. Emission reductions have been made significantly compared to the previous calculation. Despite the fact that our carbon footprint is already small, we want to offset emissions. We will be planting new pine seedlings in Finland this year during their planting season, after which we can say that we are again a carbon-neutral company.
The carbon footprint of our customer projects
We have also developed our own calculation tool “Interior Carbon Footprint Calculator” for our customer projects, which can be used in design work to minimize the carbon footprint. The designer can evaluate the material and other choices he / she has made in the design work from the point of view of carbon load. Gaia Consulting has assisted in the development and auditing of the tool. Business Finland.
We offer our customers the opportunity to utilize this tool as part of interior design to integrate carbon load minimization into the design right from the start. The end result of using the tool is a carbon load calculation of how much carbon the new interior will produce for nature.
