For a lot of businesses, especially in people-heavy sectors like consulting, law and architecture, business travel is one of the biggest sources of Scope 3 emissions. It's also one of the most commonly estimated, with footprints built from spend rather than the underlying trip data that reflects emissions more accurately.
That's why we've partnered with fellow B Corp Seedling, making it easier for any team measuring Scope 3 emissions on their platform to bring in accurate, activity-based travel data.
Seedling specializes in helping SMEs measure, reduce and report their carbon footprints to make genuine, measurable progress towards Net Zero. By feeding Goodwings' acticity-level emissions data into the Seedling platform, businesses can build a more complete view of their footprint — with the travel portion grounded in real activity data rather than a spend-based estimate.
Seedling is a B Corp certified, simple-to-use carbon management platform founded in 2022 in Bath, UK, with a mission to make credible climate action accessible to every business, without the need for in-house specialists.
Business travel, from flights to hotels, and rail to rental cars, falls under Scope 3, Category 6. For firms that travel a lot, for instance to client sites, Category 6 is frequently the single largest part of their footprint.
Accurately tracking business travel emissions can be a challenge. Often, expense data is the only information available on business travel, making spend-based estimates — where £s spent on travel are converted into tCO2e outputs — a common method for estimating travel emissions. Spend-based estimates are a good starting point, but their accuracy is limited because the price of a journey doesn't reliably reflect its emissions. For example, two passengers travelling on the same route may pay very different prices depending on when they booked, despite making the same journey. Ticket price alone is a poor proxy for emissions.
Wherever possible, activity-based data — mode of transport, distance travelled and travel class — provides a much more accurate measure of business travel emissions. It also gives a truer picture of the impact of changes you make as a business, such as switching journeys from air to rail, even where rail is the more expensive option.
That's where the Goodwings and Seedling platforms line up perfectly. Goodwings measures the emissions of each trip directly, and that data can then feed into your Seedling footprint to replace an estimate with something grounded in activity data.
What this means if you're a Seedling client
If you already use Seedling, Goodwings gives you a way to manage business travel that has emissions measurement built in from the start. There are two practical benefits:
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What this means if you're a Goodwings customerIf you're already tracking your travel emissions with Goodwings, Seedling can help you take the next step beyond a single part of your operations.
You don't need in-house carbon expertise to get there, and more than 500 businesses already trust Seedling to simplify carbon accounting. |
Our shared focus on measurable action
What brought Goodwings and Seedling together is a shared view that climate action has to be real and measurable, not just a claim.
In founder from Seedling, Aimée Tennan words:
"Good technology should make doing the right thing easier. We're excited to partner with Goodwings because they're solving a real problem for businesses in exactly the right way. Together, we're helping teams measure their emissions more accurately with less effort."
And from Goodwings founder Christian Møller-Holst:
"We look for partners who share our conviction that business must be a force for good. Seedling stood out immediately because they share that exact DNA."
Both Seedling and Goodwings are trying to make an essential part of running a company simpler, and its impact clearer. Goodwings does that for business travel, and Seedling does it for your holistic carbon footprint. Together, we've created a more joined-up way to manage travel and make practical progress on emissions.
If you're a Seedling client, you can now access Goodwings through Seedling's Supplier Marketplace. And if you're a Goodwings customer who's ready to measure, analyse and report your full footprint, you can get started here.