The world needs to move fast to make a meaningful difference in the fight against climate change. We all leave an impact on the planet, so we can all play a part in preventing climate change.

Comrade Kiev is built around the principle of celebrating objects already in existence rather than creating something new. But, our business still has an impact on the environment. We’ve been working to reduce our carbon footprint. Here’s our journey so far.

Travel

Buying posters requires flights. Quite a few flights. This means our small business has an outsized impact on the environment. A one week trip to Ukraine (flights, hotel, taxis & food) creates around 1.31 tonnes of carbon. In 2019, I made the decision to halve our carbon footprint by halving the number of flights I took. We’re also focusing on lower impact travel, and have partnered with Chooose to offset all unavoidable emissions.

Packaging

We’ve sought out suppliers who share the same dedication to sustainability as us. Sourcing high quality packaging that was sustainably sourced, recycled, recyclable took a lot of research. Our inner tubes, outer tubes, stickers, and notecards all come from different suppliers. Even our rubber bands, which are compostable, come from sustainably grown rubber trees in Thailand.

Postage

Some postal services are beginning to introduce carbon neutral services. But, rather than making fundamental changes to their supply chains and investing in green technology, they just offset emissions. For that reason, we’ll continue to offset emissions instead through our partners Chooose. For every poster we send to a customer, 50kg of carbon is offset, which covers the footprint of sending a poster around the world a few times.  

Website & Power

Our website sits on Shopify which is in turn hosted by AWS. Both run on between 50-100% renewable power, and have ambitious goals to reduce/offset their emissions further. You can read about their goals here and here. In October 2020, we switched to Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity provider.

We’re just at the beginning of our journey. We’ll continue to find new ways to reduce our footprint and when we do, share what we’ve learnt with you. If you’d like to suggest ways we can reduce our footprint further or would like to discuss ways you can reduce your impact, you can get in touch at stephane@comradekiev.com. Shop our vintage environmental propaganda posters below or explore the collection here.