OPIN Offsets 100 Tonnes of Carbon CO2

Ottawa (June 5th, 2020) - OPIN, an award-winning web development agency, announced achieving 100 Tonnes of Carbon C02 Offsets on World Environment Day. OPIN is proud to work with Carbonbase, helping preserve our environment while contributing to a number of UN Sustainable Development Goals, including health, social, economic, climate and environmental.

OPIN’s offsets are made possible by supporting a solar cookstove project for refugee families in Chad, run by the Fair Climate Fund. For this project, refugees in Chad are provided with solar cookers that have a positive impact on the safety and health of people who live in very difficult circumstances. Moreover, by using the power of the sun when cooking, less wood is used, and therefore CO2 is saved.

Since the war in Darfur, more than 200,000 Sudanese have fled to neighbouring Chad. These refugees have sometimes been staying in refugee camps in the border region for more than 15 years. Cooking on an open fire is one of the many challenges these families face and one of the leading causes of death related to indoor air pollution and deforestation in the developing world.

“Giving back is core to our culture at OPIN. Our volunteering and supporting non-profit programs enable our employees to become high-impact citizens by harnessing our skills for good and strengthen the communities we live in,” says Christopher Smith, Founder and CEO of OPIN. “Adding sustainability and carbon offsets into our core values is simply the right choice for our employees who are motivated by doing good in the world in which we live.”

OPIN’s carbon offsets are the equivalent to:

• 21.7 passenger vehicles driven for one year
• 251,320 miles driven by an avg. passenger vehicle
• 11,252 gallons of gasoline consumed
• 12 homes’ energy use for one year
• 1,654 tree seedlings grown for 10 years
• 123 acres of U.S. forests in one year

The Darfur camps are located in a very dry region where little wood is available. This creates conflicts between the local population and refugees who need scarce wood for cooking. Women and children often have to travel long distances to get wood and they are regularly harassed, assaulted, abducted or, in the worst case, do not return at all.

To address this problem, the CooKit Solar Cooker was launched in 2005 in six refugee camps. The CooKit is a solar cooker that can be used for cooking with the help of solar energy. By using the CooKit women and children no longer have to leave the camp to get wood. This means a significant improvement in women's safety and a clean and healthy smoke-free method of cooking. 

FairClimateFund has supported this project since 2019 by Gold Standard certifying the CO2 savings resulting from reduced wood consumption. With the income from these certificates or carbon credits, we ensure that the women in these camps can continue to cook with the CooKit in the future.

Since the start of the project, around 40,000 women in the refugee camps and surrounding villages have been trained and provided with CooKits. Solar cooking requires a significant behavioural change and many families have been cooking with this technology for more than 10 years, which is a remarkable achievement. The challenge is to continue to offer users access to this technology and to connect new camps to the project.

Having worked on over 200 enterprise-level projects over the past decade, OPIN has a long history of powering some of the world’s most ambitious digital projects including building websites for charities and non-profit organizations. 

OPIN understands the unique challenges of NFP organizations that are always trying to do more with limited resources. From building new websites, upgrading websites to be more secure to building intranets and web apps, OPIN is the trusted partner to help mission-critical organizations focus on delivering impact.

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About OPIN Digital

OPIN Digital is a leading digital agency providing strategic guidance, creative design, and software development powered by Open Innovation - embracing collaboration and openness in a complex world. We design, develop and manage ambitious digital projects, including websites, intranets, applications and marketing technologies. 

OPIN’s team brings an agile team of experts to every project, employing research-backed, data-driven processes to take your project from vision to reality.  Our unique blend of open source technologies, agile development processes and cohesive teams allows us to build unified campaign platforms for our clients. 

We are passionate about technology and can help you build a world-class marketing technology stack and campaign delivery platform. Our award-winning work is recognized by numerous publications, and OPIN is ranked as one of the fastest-growing agencies in North America.

PR Contact Info:

ryan.pelicos@opin.ca