80% of the world’s energy is still generated by burning fossil fuel so 80 billion of the approximately 100 billion new products made every year result in the addition of 51 billion tons of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. (April 28, 2023,  United States Environmental Protection Agency). Even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide and reached “net zero” emissions, we would still need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from the current 421 parts per million to 350 parts per million, the level where life can be sustained. To do so we will need to rely on carbon sequestration. Therefore achieving Carbon Neutral Status will not be enough to avert catastrophe. That is why we propose to set the goal of achieving carbon-negative status, where more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere than is emitted.

In order to ensure that all producers have a chance to participate in the important work of reducing carbon emissions, the use of our C Minus mark will be licensed to any factory that complies with Scope 1 -3 of the Green House Gas reduction protocols contained in the Paris Agreement and in the ISO standards created to measure compliance with the Paris Agreement. More information on this can be found here: https://www.iso.org/iso-14001-environmental-management.html

We license the C Minus mark for carbon emission and Green House Gas (GHG) mitigation to organizations and private companies that are independently certified to be meeting their obligations under current GHG standards, from Scope 1 requirements to take an inventory of their emissions, to Scope 2, taking steps to reduce emissions, and Scope 3, achieving Net Zero emissions, all the way to using the newest technology to produce products that contain more atmospheric carbon than the production of the product emits to the environment, thereby achieving the necessary goal of reaching Carbon Negative Status.