The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol was used to measure Meaningful Planet's emissions covering FY25 (31 July 2024 to 31 July 2025).

The GHG Protocol provides the world's most widely used emissions accounting standards for businesses. Collectively, they offer a standardised framework for companies across sectors to account and report their GHG emissions, thus facilitating global access to consistent and comparable emissions data.

The GHG Protocol Standards contain step-by-step guidance to quantify and report emissions, covering six GHGs under the Kyoto Protocol: carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆).

Understanding the business

Meaningful Planet’s direct operations, value chain and key competitors were analysed to determine the scope 1, 2 and 3 emission categories of relevance. These would be included in the company’s FY25 carbon footprint.

Source: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard.

Relevant emission categories

No scope 1 or 2 emission categories were considered relevant.

Seven scope 3 emission categories were identified as material to Meaningful Planet:

• Purchased goods and services
• Upstream transportation and distribution
• Downstream transportation and distribution
• Business travel
• Employee commuting
• Use of sold products
• End-of-life treatment of sold products

The approach

To quantify GHG emissions, Meaningful Planet collected primary and secondary data pertaining to the seven scope 3 emission categories. This included activity data (e.g. energy consumed for remote working), financial expenditure and industry averages. In addition, appropriate emission factors were gathered to convert data into emissions; as all of the company's activities occur within the UK, emission factors were mainly sourced from the 2025 UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting Database.

Emissions are reported in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e), as per the requirements of the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.

Emissions formula

The basic formula to calculate Meaningful Planet's emissions was as follows:

About

The emissions associated with goods and services purchased by Meaningful Planet was its largest emission hotspot (42% of the total). These emissions were generated during the manufacture of these products, including from the extraction and processing of raw materials.

Food and drink purchased by the company in FY25 accounted for most of the emissions (29%), followed by the purchase of Crisp (12%) and Notion (10%) software.

Notably, the emissions associated with the acquisition of physical SIM cards and eSIMs accounted for only 3.5% of the emission category.

Top five emission contributors (% of category)

About

Downstream transportation and distribution was the second largest hotspot, accounting for 29% of the carbon footprint. These emissions were produced in shipping physical SIM cards to customers from the company's registered address.

In the absence of customer addresses, an average value of 207 km was used to estimate associated emissions. With 62 physical SIMs sold in FY25, this means that the total distance travelled equated to 12,834 km.

Importantly, the transition from physical to eSIMs will help to address this emissions hotspot. In addition, assuming parcel delivery companies continue to expand the number of electric vehicles in their fleets, the transportation of physical SIM cards will become less carbon-intensive.

Key statistics

About

During the reporting period, the use of sold products was Meaningful Planet's third largest emission hotspot (15% of the total). These emissions originate from the use of SIMs sold to business customers and individuals, including powering the network infrastructure and data transmission.

In line with the GHG Protocol, this category captures the total expected lifetime emissions of the 129 SIMs sold during FY25 (67 eSIMs and 62 physical SIMs). Applying the average annual emissions per SIM across the active base, over an assumed 5-year lifespan, gives 1.69 tCO₂e.

In the absence of average customer subscription data, a 5-year lifespan was applied to both physical SIMs and eSIMs. Importantly, in-year usage across the entire active base of 973 SIMs amounted to 2.55 tCO₂e.

In-year SIM usage by activity (% of 2.55 tCO₂e)

The context

The FY25 carbon footprint will serve as Meaningful Planet's emissions baseline. This means the company can now set emission reduction targets, using the baseline to measure progress against. The targets should focus on addressing emission hotspots, especially purchased goods and services and downstream transportation and distribution.

In line with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which provides the gold standard for corporate net zero target setting, near- and long-term targets should be set to achieve net zero. Near-term targets must have a target year no more than 5 years from the base year (i.e. 2025), whereas long-term targets are to be achieved no later than 2050.

Net zero targets

The overarching net zero target could be:

• Meaningful Planet commits to achieve net zero GHG emissions across the value chain by 2050.

Possible near-term targets:

• To reduce absolute scope 3 GHG emissions 35% by 2030 from a 2025 base year.
• To reduce emissions from the use of sold products 50% by 2030 from a 2025 base year.
• To reduce emissions per SIM sold by 10% by 2028.

Possible long-term targets:

• To reduce absolute scope 3 GHG emissions 90% by 2050 from a 2025 base year.
• To reduce emissions per SIM sold 70% by 2045.