Investing in superpollutant projects

In Auburn, Washington, the vision for Schilling Cider was seeded in 2012, when co-founder and CEO Colin Schilling was on a hike with a friend that he met through an MBA program. They decided to quit their jobs to make cider together. “By February of the following year we had our permits, federal and state, and then by April we were selling cider,” Schilling said.

Sustainability was a core pillar for the company from the beginning, and building this strong environmental foundation into the business across all departments helped Schilling to create a profitable business with purpose. In line with this mission, the team began calculating their carbon footprint voluntarily in 2021. Schilling Cider has reduced its carbon emissions in various ways, such as by switching to a fully electric fleet of vehicles. The company also selected cans over bottles for recyclability, choosing to print directly onto the cans instead of using the wraps and stickers that hurt recycling rates. But to take their sustainability strategy to the next level, the team needed to look outside their own four walls.

“Our distributors use diesel trucks to ship product, our grocery store partners obviously pay for electricity to keep things refrigerated,” Schilling said. “We can never get to a point where our own operations are so negative in terms of carbon footprint that it would offset all those other partners in our value chain.”

Schilling decided to purchase carbon credits: instruments that represent a verified climate action to curb climate change. After doing some research into the different climate solutions available, he was intrigued by carbon credits generated from superpollutant destruction and mitigation projects due to their potential for huge impact at a reasonable cost. “I want the combination of the very highest quality credits that are also still in the price range that we can afford them,” he says.