Businesses today are faced with a paradox: a need to both keep up with consumer demand, while also meeting modern shoppers’ expectations for sustainability.

In the past six years, there has been a 71% increase in online searches globally for “sustainable goods,” and in the past year, 44% of consumers globally chose to buy from brands that have a clear commitment to sustainability.

Customers stay loyal for longer to brands that offer clear commitments to sustainability—something that has been shown to increase the lifetime value of a single customer by 306%.

Because of this increase in brand loyalty, merchants are responding. Thirty-five percent of surveyed companies are now actively measuring or tracking their emissions, and 23% are actively working to offset emissions.

But offsetting emissions is only half the battle.The other half is actually removing the carbon already in the sky.

Brands that offer their support to carbon removal technologies will make an even bigger impact in the fight against climate change, and will be able to show an even stronger commitment to sustainability to their customers.

This is why Shopify’s Planet app was created: to let businesses selling on Shopify directly fund and accelerate innovative carbon removal technology, and to engage customers with a chance to do the same.

Table of Contents

Introducing Shopify’s Planet app
Supporting world-first carbon removal technology
How big is the carbon removal challenge?
Ready to help accelerate carbon removal?

Introducing Shopify’s Planet app

Planet is a new app from Shopify that powers carbon-neutral shipping and comes with storefront icons that allow merchants to visualize and promote their commitment to carbon removal.

With Planet, Shopify stores become drivers for change. There are two options for carbon-neutral shipping:

Let customers pay $0.25 USD before checkout
Pay between $0.035 and $0.15 per order

Regardless of which option merchants choose, all funds are used to purchase carbon removal credits from companies that Shopify has vetted. In fact, Shopify buys carbon removal credits from the same companies that execute carbon removal for Planet.

Each company we’ve chosen to support is working toward a shared goal of finding innovative ways to create a more sustainable future. They’ve all created solutions that could truly revolutionize their sector and make an impactful contribution to reversing climate change at scale.

Keep reading to the end of this article to learn about some of the companies that will receive support from the Planet app and the challenges they’re facing.

Supporting world-first carbon removal technology

Carbon removal comes in many forms. It can either be accelerated through the powerful natural systems around us or manufactured through innovative new technologies (or a combination of both).

In either case, the goal is to remove carbon from the atmosphere in a scalable manner and then store it safely for long periods of time. The companies that do this are driven by some of the most innovative minds in the world and are making Earth-changing contributions to our societies.

Here are just a few of them.

Grassroots Carbon

Grassroots Carbon connects companies looking to purchase carbon removal credits with certified landowners who are able to sell nature-based soil carbon storage.

It is supported through the Decade subscription plan.

Running Tide

Running Tide is building technology that restores and accelerates natural processes in the ocean, helping to leverage the world’s largest carbon sink.

It is supported through the Century and Millennium subscription plans.

Remora

Remora’s compact, mobile technology captures at least 80% of a semi truck’s carbon emission directly from the tailpipe, which is then sold to end users who can store it for the long term.

It is supported through the Century and Millennium subscription plans.

Heirloom

Heirloom’s direct air capture technology enhances the carbon mineralization process—driven by naturally occurring minerals, one of the planet’s most vital carbon sinks—to absorb CO2 from the air in days, rather than years.

It is supported through the Century and Millenium subscription plans.

Planetary

Planetary's technology speeds up the natural process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by adding safe “antacids” to local ocean areas. Their process of producing antacids using mine waste also generates green hydrogen and battery metals, which are key to reducing emissions from transportation.

It is supported through the Century and Millennium subscription plans.

Charm

Charm uses plants to capture CO2 from the atmosphere by converting biomass into a stable, carbon-rich liquid that it then pumps deep underground. This removes CO2 permanently from the atmosphere.

It is supported through the Century and Millennium subscription plans.

How big is the carbon removal challenge?

To keep global temperatures from increasing beyond the 1.5°C threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement—thereby avoiding the worst impacts of climate change—the world needs to get to net-zero carbon emissions by around 2050 and actively remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

How much carbon do we need to remove? Scientists predict that up to 10 gigatonnes of CO2—a gigatonne is 1,000,000,000 tonnes—need to be removed from the atmosphere per year by 2050. That’s in addition to hitting the goal of net-zero emissions worldwide.

To do that, we need to empower entrepreneurs and innovators who are working to harness both natural and technological strategies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The technology exists, but the scale isn’t quite there yet.

The problem is the world is not standing still while these technologies catch up.

Planet is one way merchants can help accelerate this world-changing research, while also signaling to their customers that they take sustainability seriously.

Ready to help accelerate carbon removal?

Help fund some of the world’s most promising carbon capture technology. Head over to the Planet app page now to get started.

David Vranicar