Plastic Neutral Certification – How Does it Work for Me?
Becoming Plastic Neutral is a great way to help stop plastic entering the oceans and littering our environments. The concept is simple; you, your family and friends or your business every year use a certain weight of plastic in kilograms, which is called your Plastic Footprint. Whilst you’ll try hard to reduce your Plastic Footprint by avoiding excessive plastic use, you’re unlikely ever to reduce it to zero. Buying Plastic Credits is a great way to reduce your Plastic Footprint to zero, whereby the money you pay for the credits goes to a Plastic Recycling project in a remote and vulnerable community, where they collect and recycle a weight of plastic equivalent to your Plastic Footprint on your behalf. Thus you become Plastic Neutral.
There are two types of Plastic Neutral Certifications:
- Plastic Neutral for Individuals
- Plastic Neutral for Business
1. Plastic Neutral for Individuals
This is a simple program for you, your family, your friends, or your staff to become Plastic Neutral. This program uses an estimate Plastic Footprint for each individual, which is 53kg per year. This estimate is based upon the WWF Plastic Accountability Report (read more here).
Plastic Collective provided three packages:
- Plastic Neutral – you pay US$55 per year to collect and recycle 53kg of plastic on your behalf
- Plastic Positive – you pay US$110 per year to collect and recycle 105kg of plastic on your behalf (twice your footprint)
- Plastic Awesome – you pay US$220 per year to collect and recycle 210kg of plastic on your behalf (four times your footprint)
Unfortunately, you cannot purchase Plastic Credits for an Individual and claim that your Business is Plastic Neutral. This is because the Plastic Footprint of a Business and Individual are completely different.
Click here to purchase online your Individual Plastic Neutral Certification. You can also gift Individual Plastic Neutral Certification to friends or family.
2. Plastic Neutral for Businesses
This is a more sophisticated program for Businesses to become Plastic Neutral. This program accurately calculates your Businesses Plastic Footprint, which will vary widely depending on the size of your business and its activities. The calculation can be applied to different levels of your Business activities as follows:
- Plastic Footprint of your products – which focuses on the volume of plastics used in your products, plus the primary packaging and secondary packaging. This is the simplest Certification for a Business.
- Plastic Footprint of your entire company – which is based on plastic used by the entire company, which includes the volume of plastics used in your products, plus the primary packaging and secondary packaging, and any plastic used throughout your offices, and supply chain. This is the most comprehensive and credible Certification for a Business.
In both cases, you have the option to self-certify your Plastic Footprint using Plastic Collective’s calculator, or commission Plastic Collective to calculate it on your behalf. Self-certification is the simplest approach, whilst 3rd party calculation is the most credible. The route you choose to calculate your Plastic Footprint must be qualified in your Certification so all your customers have transparency.
For all Business Plastic Neutral Certifications we charge an annual fee of US$5,000 which covers all administration, compliance, verification, marketing kit and project liaison.
Additionally, you pay a per kilogram fee ranging from US$1/kg to US$2.50/kg for each kilogram of your Plastic Footprint.
Please contact us here if you would like to know more.
Note: 100% of the administration fee and 30% of the per kilogram fee goes to Plastic Collective. 70% of the per kilogram fee is guaranteed to go to a remote and vulnerable community recycling project.
