We encourage everyone to offset their flights through a carbon reduction programme operated by climate and development experts Climate Impact Partners.
It’s important to us to assess our carbon footprint when we travel abroad and reduce the impact of our own carbon emissions. We carbon offset the flights on our research trips abroad for staff.
Providing safe water in Kenya
All the projects we support have a clear carbon reduction goal to combat climate change. In 2015 we invested the funds in the provision of LifeStraws in Kenya.
The award-winning LifeStraw Carbon for Water project provides water filters for families in Kenya. It not only provides safe drinking water for millions of people, it cuts carbon emissions by removing the need to boil water in order to make it safe to drink. This in turn reduces the demand for fuel, the need for firewood collection and, ultimately reducing deforestation.
By offsetting 1,127 tonnes of carbon emissions, Audley helps provide two million litres of clean water to over 400 households.
780 million people in the world still do not have access to safe drinking water. Many suffer from waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea — the third leading cause of death among children and adults in Kenya. This project cuts carbon and provides safe water by distributing 877,505 LifeStraw Family filters to households in Kenya’s Western Province. The gravity driven point-of-use water filters require no electricity or consumables.
The programme provides education and training services in the local community, including teaching about hygiene and safe water, hand-washing and sanitation.
Repair and replacement of the LifeStraw Family filters is done on an ongoing basis with a full-time Sub-county coordinator employed for different regions in Kenya, supported by a group of volunteers.
LifeStraw has helped me to access safe water and avoid waterborne illnesses. The children are healthy and they have been taught about its importance. Also by improving health, there is a notable decrease in hospital expenses.
'My life is greatly different from before we had LifeStraw. Before I had LifeStraw, I had to buy firewood to boil my water. Here, we cannot gather firewood as there is none about, but you have to buy it. But now that I filter water, I don’t boil it. I used to buy a small tree for Ks 500 to cut into pieces, it would last two days. Now that I no longer buy firewood to boil, I can now buy Ks 200 of firewood and it lasts one week. I have seen a difference in my health. If you compare the water before the LifeStraw and the water after, there is a great improvement in taste. When they brought the LifeStraw it was difficult for me, but when they came to re-educate, I learned and now it’s easy.'
Susan Njerumani, Farmer of maize, beans and vegetables. Married to Vincent with one child, and stepchildren
Past projects for investment
Projects we've supported in the past include land purchase and tree planting in Costa Rica, solar ovens in South Africa, and biogas units and solar lamps in India.
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