Our Story
Every purchase we make has an impact on our planet. From production, to packaging, to shipping, online shopping is raising our global carbon emissions. Trees have the power to absorb the extra CO2 this generates, but there’s never been a simple and trustworthy way for individuals to get involved in the process.
That’s why we started Fig, because doing less harm should be easier for everyone. Our browser extension makes it effortless to balance out the carbon footprint of your purchases as you shop online, automatically estimating their impact and letting you offset it in just a few clicks as we do the hard bit for you.
Our AI model is constantly working to refine our estimates, using publicly available data on company emissions, industry sectors, and logistics. And because transparency matters, every offset supports verified environmental projects that actively remove carbon from the atmosphere.
A healthier planet starts with small actions. Fig makes it easy to start right now.
Our Mission
Our mission is to reduce the environmental impact of online shopping. Fig does that by seamlessly integrating into your checkout experience and letting you offset your purchases in just a few clicks.
We also offer a range of carbon offset business solutions to help your business achieve their net zero goals.
Our Carbon Offset
The plantation operated by the UK company Mere Plantations Ltd who are based in Chester
Ghana. In Ashanti District and just north of a small village called Offinsu.
Mere Plantations were offered a long lease on land which the Ghanaian Government had officially designated to be ‘degraded forest land’ (ie land which had once been virgin forest but which had previously been illegally logged and now was little more than scrub with very badly degraded soil and next to no ability to act as a carbon sink. Since 2011 they have planted millions of teak trees along with other indigenous species over an area broadly comparable to the size of the City of Manchester. There are now around 5 million standing with 100,000s more saplings being planted each year in various parts of the reservation known as compartments. They do so both on their own behalf and on behalf of individuals and corporations.
Simply by ensuring that the trees grow in the tropical sum. A very complex operation lies behind ensuring that they do, but so far as the capture of carbon is concerned a tree which lives and grows is one which will inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.
This is calculated using formulae approved by the UN and then audited by third party experts. How much growth occurs in each compartment in a particular year is tested by having sampling plots where specific and precise measurements are taken. From that can we determined how much carbon has already been captured (around 750,000 tonnes) and how much the compartment is likely to capture overall during the period of its operation (around another 31 million tonnes).
To put that into perspective, annually the carbon dioxide created by an average person is in the region of 10 - 12 tonnes.
They provide a large number of casual and permanent roles for local men and women to earn well carrying out the tasks of preparing unimproved degraded forest land; preparing the soil for planting; germination of seeds (a surprisingly complex procedure; propagation of saplings; planting out; the creation and maintenance of roads and fire-rides (the latter requiring the use of cyclones – try cutting down elephant grass with a strimmer!); fire watch and prevention; replacement of failed saplings and security. In addition to permitting lots of families to have a decent income, land is set aside for farming so that the employees can eat in the reservation (there is no Pret just five minutes away) and 10% of all income goes to the local community generally.
It is the most amazing wood. It is heavily oiled naturally and so will, after around 3 years or so, withstand forest fire and indeed almost anything short of termite attack. It is dense and water resistant and so makes excellent material for everything from garden decking to high grade furniture. It becomes tall phenomenally quickly but over the course of years it adds to its girth and the total volume grows according to the time honoured formula πr 2 h (ie any increase in the radius has a disproportionate effect on the increase in the overall total of volume). This cannot occur without carbon being locked into the tree. Once locked in, it will stay locked in for many decades afterwards since even when cut no-one sensible tries to burn such a valuable wood and it won’t otherwise decompose in any other way.
Ghana, like the UK, has a foundational basis upon which land is held. In the UK, all land is held from the Crown which is deemed to be the true owner of all; whereas in Ghana, land is held from the their true universal owners, the ancestors. Within the terms of the legal leasehold, there is therefore the need to ensure that the local traditional leader, the Offinsohene remains content with the operation of the land (including avoiding working on the same on ‘taboo’ days).
The complex web of domestic, UK, bilateral and international treaty and legal obligations which relate to the growing of tropical timber is not easy to navigate. But to ensure that it is so, Mere volunteer to undertake a series of carbon audits which permit them to register their carbon offset with a highly reputable certifier, Cercarbono for placement within an online registry (EcoRegistry). These certifications simply cannot be obtained if the methodology is not correct.
Further, the credits have been checked out by the insurers (Howden) who arranged the protection for buyers of Mere credits – should they ever fail (and why would they?) the buyer can rest assured that the value of the credits is recovered so that other credits can be bought to replace them. Thus they can be purchased from Fig with complete confidence