The MIS developer describes the live carbon footprinting tool as a “world first”.

“Carbon accounting is becoming as mainstream as cost accounting, and we’re now entering an era when it’s as normal to ask about the environmental footprint of goods or services as it is price,” said Dominic Harris, co-founder of carbon advisory, consultancy and software developer CarbonQuota.

The Tharstern tie-up came about after the two businesses were introduced by Leeds-based direct marketing specialist Gecko following a sales call with CarbonQuota, which demoed its carbon calculation and offsetting services on two Gecko jobs for a key financial services client.

Gecko managing director Chris Bottomley said the results were “a real eye opener” and as a result he approached his longstanding MIS supplier Tharstern to see if it could integrate CarbonQuota functionality into its MIS to generate live, accurate job specific carbon footprints for each job at the point of quoting – so that at the point of approval clients could see lower carbon or offsetting options.

“We’re hearing more and more about the importance of reducing our carbon impact, and at Gecko we wanted to do the right thing and be part of the solution,” said Bottomley.

“So, we decided to offer our clients the opportunity to not only calculate the carbon footprint of their jobs, but give them the chance to offset it too.”

To instigate the process, CarbonQuota conducted a full carbon footprint assessment of Gecko’s operation, processes and materials over several weeks. This data was then plugged into CarbonQuota’s databases and algorithms, this footprint data for each individual process and material was then fed into its Tharstern MIS. Once the system calculates the carbon used to produce the job it then includes an end-of-life assessment to generate a 360° carbon footprint for each job.

Gecko has been running its live carbon calculator service since last year.

“Historically, print businesses often only looked at the carbon footprint of paper which accounted for about half of the total carbon footprint of the job,” said Harris.

CarbonQuota’s platform also includes production, consumables, transport, postage, outwork, fulfilment and end of life.

If a client decides to offset a job through Gecko, it can be done to the PAS2060 Carbon Neutral standard.

“The project at Gecko shows that carbon footprinting for the packaging and print sector can be automated and science based,” said Tharstern chief revenue officer Lee Ward.

“Once the assessment has been carried out by CarbonQuota and the carbon tool in Tharstern is configured, our users just continue to use Tharstern in the same way – nothing changes other than the new addition to each quote and the ability to report on the company’s carbon footprint as a whole.”

Carbon advisory specialist CarbonQuota was one of the businesses that partnered with Webmart on the latter’s Enviromail service, which was launched last summer.