The GoodyGood Blog

Help fund systemic solutions to climate change

Climate change is a big global problem. Individuals doing their bit helps, but systemic changes also need to happen both locally and internationally to address it. You can play a role in these big changes by helping fund projects that practically implement them, like replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with renewables.

Often, these projects need to close a funding gap by selling the CO2 reductions they make in the form of carbon offsets. For an individual, navigating the carbon offsets marketplace can be tricky and complicated. That’s where we come in.

Good carbon offsetting can help fight climate change

We make it easy for you to fund projects that are making real, certified carbon reductions. The team at GoodyGood does all the homework researching projects and evaluating them on a range of quality criteria. We handpick the best of the bunch and buy these high quality carbon reductions in bulk.

We break the offsets up into affordable packages for our subscriptions and one-off products. You get a specific amount of carbon reduction with every purchase.

We add a small margin, so we can keep making it easy for everyone to support carbon reduction.

The more people that buy carbon reductions, the more projects that can happen. That’s good for the climate, that's good for everyone.

You can always add more climate action

GoodyGood is a simple, easy way to do more about climate change, whether you're already doing a lot, you're just getting started, or you're somewhere in between.

More is more when it comes to climate action. GoodyGood is about making it fun and accessible for you to do more, and to celebrate the progress you make.

Are you serious? Do I really need to offset my BBQ? 

Summer is (almost) here in Aotearoa! Along with sunburn, sitting around in wet togs for far too long and forgetting what day of the week it is in those magical few days after Christmas, sizzling some snarlers on the old barbeque is a ubiquitous feature of a great New Zealand summer. 

At GoodyGood, we help you take care of the climate impact of things that bring you joy. 

So this summer, we've introduced a one-off product to take care of the climate impact of your summer BBQs.

‘Hullaballoo for your BBQ’ is all about celebrating what’s awesome about the summer BBQ. Friends and family getting together and enjoying each other’s company, or awkward workmates seeing their boss wearing shorts for the first time. It’s about connecting, and sharing.

You might be wondering why on Earth you’d need to offset your BBQ. Is your barbeque bad for the environment? Or maybe you’ve got deeper, nerdier questions, like what are the CO2 emissions from your barbeque, or would a gas barbeque be better than a charcoal grill when it comes to carbon pollution? 

Well, the short answer is yes, cooking food by burning fossil fuels does make carbon emissions and yes, there is a difference in emissions between a gas or charcoal BBQ, but... 

the biggest difference you can make is changing what you put on the barbeque. 

Let’s run the numbers…

When you take care of the climate impact of your summer barbeques with GoodyGood, we offset half a tonne of CO2 for you, using one of our many awesome climate projects. That covers you for a 9kg bottle of LPG and about 15kg of meat. 

The assumptions our backroom nerds have used to work this out are that using 1kg of LPG produces about 3kgs of CO2-equivalent emissions and that the average kilo of meat you’re grilling makes about 30kgs of CO2. 

That’s right, a kilo of meat can create more CO2 than a whole LPG bottle. 

So while a charcoal BBQ produces about 3 times the CO2 of a gas BBQ, if you love that smoky charcoal flavour, you don’t have to give it up to reduce the climate impact of your barbeque. Just change what you’re grilling. 

Beef has really high emissions, as does lamb, while other meats like pork and poultry have lower emissions and plant-based options are lower again. Way lower. Carbon Brief has a great summary (GoodyGoods love a good graph!) and some University of Otago academics have researched the carbon footprint of local food more closely too. 

Putting on delicious plant-based or vegetarian barbeque food would slash the carbon footprint of your next grill party, but if you can’t quite get your carnivorous family across the line on Vegan Lyfe, just remember these three easy peasy steps: 

Less beef and lamb

Some pork and poultry instead

Add more plants. 

Was that a haiku? We’re not sure. 

In the meantime, you can make a Hullabaloo for your BBQ (that’s GoodyGood-speak for offsetting your summer BBQs) by adding it to your climate mix here, or just start a conversation by sharing this post.  

Say hola to our friend Pamuk

Pamuk was named our Pet of the Month for August. He lives in Madrid, Spain and is one year old. His human parent Renee says,

“Not to ruin his street cred, but he is secretly still a cuddly puppy even though he weighs 30 kilos". 

Pamuk’s favourite food is frozen strawberries and he definitely wants to help save the planet as being outside enjoying nature is his favourite activity. He loves hiking, swimming, and chasing scents and has recently discovered a penchant for socks.

Renee made Pamuk a GoodyGood by offsetting his climate impact with us. If you have a furry friend in your life, you can make them a GoodyGood just like Pamuk by offsetting their climate paw print with us. 

Throw away your carbon footprint calculator

You might have noticed that at GoodyGood, we don't have an online carbon footprint calculator for you to work out your personal carbon emissions. We designed our subscriptions to cover the average carbon emissions of one person in New Zealand (our launch market), which is estimated to be a bit over 8 tonnes/year.

All of our subscription plans offset a nice round 12 tonnes/year and we don't offer plans that offset more, or less. Instead, we decided to throw away the carbon calculator, offset the same amount of carbon dioxide for every GoodyGood subscriber and celebrate the individual climate actions our customers take. One tonne a month is enough to cover the average carbon emissions for a person in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and most of the EU (plus a bit more for good measure). It's also enough to cover about two-thirds of the average carbon emissions for someone in the USA, Canada or Australia.

Why did we do this? Because it's simple and because we're all about progress over perfection.

The sneaky thing about Co2 is that it's everywhere, it's invisible and it's really really hard to know how much each of us create by going about our daily business. There are so many variables and assumptions, like the type of car you drive, your diet, your habits at home, the mix of energy you use or have access to, where you live, and so on. At the end of the day, an online carbon footprint calculator will only give you an estimate, so why argue about the numbers? Too complicated!

Sure, it feels nice to tick a box that says, "I bike to work" on a calculator and yes, you might fly a little bit less than your travelling pop star neighbour, but does it really matter that you're doing your bit by offsetting your 5.6 tonnes, but old mate next door should be offsetting 9.3 tonnes?

At GoodyGood, we say that climate action is like toppings on an ice cream. You can never add too much. The amount you offset shouldn't impact whether you decide to bike to work, cut back on meat or influence your workplace to cut emissions, so we think that works in reverse too. We'd rather you spend your energy doing more and celebrating the action you do take than getting wrapped up in dodgy accounting.

There's lots of different ways to help beat climate change. None are perfect by themselves, but the good thing is you can pick more than one. Or all of them! When it comes to climate action, more is more.

How about giving us a go, or if you have any questions, dropping us a line?

A wonderful Wellington collab

Wellington is a great place to start a business. Mike, John and James started GoodyGood by selling carbon offsets from a tent down at the Wellington Harbourside markets and since those days we have had heaps of support from other businesses and people around Wellington. Like local soda legends, Six Barrel Soda.

GoodyGood teamed up with Six Barrel Soda to offer their customers a $10 GoodyGood voucher and a native seedling kit to anyone that ordered from their website in September 2022.

We're always looking for ways to celebrate positive environmental progress at GoodyGood. Our mates over at Six Barrel Soda are doing some cool things by making real fruit syrups instead of industrial soda in PET bottles.

Here are a few other small sustainability actions they take at Six Barrel HQ:

• They deliver soda around Wellington on bikes using their mates NoCarCargo

• They accept returns on glass bottles for recycling at their Cellar door

• They use fairtrade organic sugar and other organic fruits where possible

• They've just launched a fab new low-waste product for seltzer that saves 50 aluminium cans by packaging the flavour in a dropper!