Charity tracks CO2 to deliver sustainable help to Africa

Sustainability software firm CloudApps has begun working with a UK- and Africa-based charity to help it maximize the number of families it helps while keeping its own carbon emissions under control.

The charity Send a Cow, which provides livestock, seeds and training to poor African families, has become a new foundation client of CloudApps and will use the company’s emissions-tracking software to track the sustainability of its operations. Send a Cow, whose patrons include the Prince of Wales, is currently working near famine-stricken parts of Ethiopia and is helping farmers dig new wells and learn sustainable farming methods to protect soil and crops from drought and flash flooding.

The charity also champions gender equality, conflict resolution, health, hygiene and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Under the foundation program, Send a Cow receives CloudApps Sustainability Suite licences and consulting time to allow it to benchmark key sustainability metrics in the same way as a corporate CloudApps customer. The management team has already started to track monthly operational sustainability metrics around energy efficiency, total CO2 emissions, the number and environmental impact of flights taken and even the quantity of paper printed.

The charity will also use the software to track its emissions intensity by the number of African households it works with. The goal is to enable Send a Cow to grow operations responsibly, helping more stricken families while remaining as sustainable as possible itself.

CloudApps bases its foundation on the 1-1-1 model: employees volunteer 1 percent of their working time, the company donates 1 percent of its equity into the foundation and it delivers 1 percent of its product to not-for-profit institutions aligned to its corporate sustainability mission.

“Recent events have shown how important it is to support African farmers who are working in harmony with the environment,” said Richie Alford, research and development manager at Send a Cow. “Send a Cow’s work, based on the principle of communities working together with the resources they have, has made us very aware of the resources we consume in that work. Our tie-up with CloudApps provides a valuable way for us to monitor closely and easily report on our resource usage, allowing us to reassure our benefactors that we are living by our founding principles.”

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said his company’s mission of improving sustainability through technology extends to social as well as commercial enterprises.

“The work being undertaken by Send a Cow in pioneering practical sustainable development is ground-breaking and so really appealed to the whole team,” Grant said.