What if your company could address climate change and plastic pollution at the same time with verified results and visible proof?
That’s the idea behind the partnership between The Offset Foundation and Plastic Collective. Together, we’re helping businesses reduce, recover, and report on both their carbon and plastic footprints through certified impact programs that make environmental responsibility simpler and more powerful.
Climate meets circularity
The Offset Foundation is a climate tech company that curates high-impact carbon and biodiversity projects worldwide. They use their expertise in telecommunications infrastructure to help businesses calculate and offset the carbon footprint of their websites and digital platforms. These include emissions that come from the energy powering servers, data centers, and online activity.
Plastic Collective works on the other end of the problem. We’re supporting plastic waste recovery projects in some of the world’s most affected regions. We help communities establish new collection and recycling systems, while helping brands measure and manage their plastic footprint.
Through this partnership, companies can now address both sides of the equation:
Carbon: by offsetting website and operational emissions through verified carbon projects.
Plastic: by funding new collection and recycling infrastructure through certified plastic credits.
How credits create real impact
Both carbon and plastic credits operate on a shared principle: verified funding for measurable environmental action.
- Carbon credits are created by projects that avoid, remove, or reduce CO₂ emissions, such as renewable energy, e-waste refurbishing, energy-efficient data centers, cement decarbonization, and reforestation.
- Once monitored and verified by independent standards, each tonne of avoided or removed emissions generates one carbon credit.
- Selling these credits allows environmental innovators to compete with business-as-usual industries and scale their solutions.
Similarly:
- Plastic credits are created by projects that recover and recycle plastic waste that would otherwise pollute nature or remain unmanaged.
- Each credit represents a verified tonne of plastic collected and processed under strict social and environmental safeguards.
- Buying these credits directly funds new collection and recycling systems in areas where waste management investment is lacking.
The result: organizations can fund real solutions, not just compensate for impact while ensuring transparency through third-party verification and public registries like Verra.
A partnership built on shared action
To celebrate the partnership, we began by offsetting each other’s impacts. This proves that circular responsibility works in both directions.
- The Offset Foundation helped calculate and offset the carbon footprint of Plastic Collective’s website.
- In return, we measured and offset the Offset Foundation’s annual plastic footprint through certified plastic credits.
Together, we closed the loop, connecting the digital world to the material one.
Offsetting Plastic Collective’s website footprint
Using the Offset Foundation’s free carbon footprint calculator, we estimated the emissions generated by Plastic Collective’s website. The result: 86 kilograms of CO₂ per month, or roughly 1 tonne per year.
To offset this, the Offset Foundation selected a mix of carbon projects focused on innovation in high-carbon sectors, including renewable energy replacing coal, e-waste refurbishing, efficient data centers, and even plugging abandoned oil and gas wells.
Within minutes, we received a certificate and badge recognizing our commitment to website carbon neutrality. It’s a small but meaningful step toward a net-zero digital presence.
You can explore the Offset Foundation’s calculator yourself. Simply enter your website’s URL, and the tool automatically estimates your carbon emissions based on traffic data. It’s instant, transparent, and designed to make climate accountability easy.
Offsetting the Offset Foundation’s plastic footprint
Next, Plastic Collective calculated the annual plastic footprint of the Offset Foundation’s office operations, which include the plastic products used and discarded by their team each year.
The total footprint: 2 tonnes of plastic waste per year. To balance this, Plastic Collective retired 2 Plastic Waste Collection Credits on behalf of the Offset Foundation.
“Retirement” means these credits were officially recorded as used on the Verra Public Registry, ensuring full traceability and preventing double-counting.
These credits were sourced from our partner project, the ASASE Foundation Community-Based Collection and Recycling Project in Accra, Ghana. In this community, plastic collectors recover and recycle plastic within 50 kilometers of the ocean, reducing pollution and creating fair livelihoods.
Like carbon credits, plastic credits enable verified, lasting change by funding infrastructure where it’s needed most.
Proof in practice
After both offsets were completed, each organization received a digital certificate and badge to display on their websites.
Plastic Collective now carries The Offset Certified badge, showcasing our commitment to carbon neutrality and a net-zero digital footprint.
The Offset Foundation proudly carries a Certification badge from Plastic Collective, showing their commitment to reducing plastic waste and supporting verified recycling projects.
These visual labels represent that certified action is possible for any organization, no matter the size or sector.
Why this partnership matters
Climate change and plastic pollution are two of the most pressing issues of our time, and both are driven by consumption and energy use.
Tackling them together helps businesses simplify sustainability, amplify impact, and act with integrity.
As Steve Hardman, CEO of Plastic Collective, explains:
“This partnership is a hugely exciting opportunity. Together with The Offset Foundation, we can offer a quick and simple way for companies to address both their carbon and plastic footprints, simultaneously and credibly.”
Get started: measure, recover, and prove your impact
Curious about your company’s environmental footprint? Here’s how you can act today:
- Use the Offset Foundation’s free website carbon calculator to measure your digital emissions.
- Try Plastic Collective’s Plastic Impact Plan Generator to estimate your packaging footprint and create a plan for certified recovery.
Together, these tools help you visualize, reduce, and recover your environmental impact, simply and transparently.
It’s time to stop treating these challenges as separate stories and start writing one solution, together.
Want to learn more?
