Canadian footwear company, Sole has launched CO2negative, a campaign to promote accurate climate effect labeling on consumer items and certify carbon-negative products. This is in keeping with the company's goal to labeling all of its core line products with exact CO2e impact data so that customers can make informed purchasing decisions.

CO2negative was created on the belief that businesses can and must do more to correctly account for their effect, and that consumers deserve access to the information they need to make informed climate-conscious purchase decisions. Sole created CO2negative to contribute its voice to rising calls for universal climate impact labeling, as well as to showcase the tremendous potential of using natural cork to create goods that are genuinely beneficial for the world.

The basic concept of CO2negative is that when it comes to carbon, neutral is not enough. Faced with the climate problem, companies must ensure that their influence on the world is not merely carbon neutral, but carbon negative – that is, they remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they add.

Mike Baker, founder and CEO of Sole, ReCORK, and CO2negative, said that simply decreasing harm is not enough; they need to repair and remediate the damage that has been done to our world.

To coincide with the CO2Negative initiative’s launch, Sole is also releasing its first CO2negative™ Certified Carbon Negative collection, made from recycled cork; the Performance footbed collection.

The Performance Medium footbed is made from ReCORK™ recycled cork and has a carbon footprint of −2.28kg CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) – 2.28kg CO2e eliminated from the atmosphere. This is due to natural cork's long-term sustainability since it is collected from the bark of carbon-trapping cork oak trees rather than chopping down a tree. Cork oak forests sequester an average of 55 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere for every kilogram of cork collected.

When assessing the ultimate effect of items manufactured with natural cork, CO2negative accounts for this sequestered carbon.

All greenhouse gas emissions connected with the product's life cycle will frequently be less than the CO2 absorbed by cork oak trees when growing the cork utilized in the product, resulting in carbon-negative products. CO2negative wants to emphasize the advantage of using existing materials that are healthy for the planet instead of hazardous petroleum-based foams and plastics by accounting for the role of cork forests in their calculations.

While not all items can be made carbon-negative from the start, their carbon footprints can all be reduced. Any product or firm that can demonstrate that its impacts have been offset by a minimum of 110% will be certified as carbon negative by CO2negative on a product-specific or company-wide basis. As a result, customers can be assured that supporting any CO2-negative project is a good idea. A product that is certified as Carbon Negative indicates that it has the correct type of influence on climate stability.

Beginning in 2022, Sole has pledged to become carbon negative. It will offset 110% of all emissions from 2021 through the ReCORK tree planting initiative after year-end is completed and all data for 2021 is collected.