Meet CarbonClick

The startup making it simple to offset your carbon footprint

Marketing Exec Araina Pereira of the Centrality Accelerator powered by Lightning Lab shares more about the current cohort. To track the progress of the accelerator programme, follow Centrality on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram.

The Centrality Accelerator programme powered by Lightning Lab has been cranking along. Over the next few weeks we’ll be introducing each of the seven teams that have selected to develop a cutting-edge decentralised application that leverages the core services making up the Centrality ecosystem.

CarbonClick is on a mission to make carbon offsetting simple. Their turnkey product makes it easy for businesses to provide customers with the option to offset their carbon footprint. CarbonClick provides full transparency to customers so they know that their contributions are making a real, tangible difference.

The startup is co-founded by Jan Ivar Czaplicki and Paul Brady, winners of the Blockworks Hackfest hosted by Centrality. As part of their prize they were selected as a wildcard entry to the accelerator programme. Here’s what they have to say about their journey so far:

What is the problem you are wanting to solve?

The Big Hairy Problem — climate change caused by global warming is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced.

Carbon Offsetting is a powerful tool in the arsenal to solve this problem. However, carbon offset programs are inefficient, opaque and inaccessible to businesses and individuals right now. CarbonClick is here to change that.

What is your business planning to achieve by the Accelerator Demo Day?

To have a product in the market, integrated with at least one business customer and transacting carbon offsets.

Why have you chosen blockchain for your solution?

Firstly, we plan to enable the ability to ‘micro offset’ — for example, to offset the carbon cost of your coffee which would be a couple of cents. Blockchain will enable us to perform these types of transactions in massive volumes and for a fraction of the cost of current systems.

Secondly, one of the problems with carbon offsetting today is a general distrust in where contributions go, what proportion is taken by intermediaries and what proportion ends up going towards creating an impact. Blockchain can bring a level of transparency to this type of exchange not possible with current systems.

Why did you want to be a part of the Centrality Accelerator?

Essentially, we saw the opportunity to join the accelerator as a way to greatly increase the chances of success in making the impact we are striving for with CarbonClick. We are very aligned with the vision of Centrality to create a fairer and more equitable world. Centrality’s ecosystem offers us the opportunity to scale quickly and also gives us access to world class blockchain expertise right here in Auckland.

What has been your greatest learning so far on your journey?

We must deeply understand the needs, wants, fears and constraints of the people who’s problems we want to solve. This takes a great deal of time, energy and expertise to get right.

What has been the biggest success/highlight/achievement so far for your business?

CarbonClick was recently awarded a grant by Auckland council to build some innovative technology to accelerate innovation in green initiatives in the city — more news to follow on this exciting initiative in early 2019!

How did you decide on a name?

Our motto is “Every Transaction Climate Friendly”. CarbonClick didn’t take too long to arrive at from here

What has been the biggest hurdle that you have overcome?

Apathy has been and will continue to be the biggest hurdle to us achieving impact on a significant scale. Our challenge is to make the CarbonClick engaging, rewarding and educational for people to use.

What’s your ‘why’?

Both founders of CarbonClick have worked in corporate for 20 years. We’ve been very lucky to work for some great companies, most recently Air New Zealand where we met. We wanted to find a way to use the skills and experience we’d learned in our careers to date to make a difference either socially or environmentally. This is where the conversation started for us.

What has been the funniest thing that has happened whilst on the accelerator?

When I was chatting with Tanmay, one of the interns, about an upcoming hike I’m doing. I postulated how great it would be to have “powdered beer” that we could easily carry in our already heavy packs. Tanmay sent me a link the following day that such a thing does in fact exist — I nearly fell off my chair in awe!

Want to find out more? Get in touch with the team or check out this feature on Noted.

To follow the progress of the accelerator programme, follow Centrality on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram plus join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram.