How PostHog uses Wren to offset carbon emissions during offsites
Sep 14, 2021
Earlier this month, we finished our first PostHog offsite of the year near Porto, in Portugal. Team members travelled from America, Estonia, The United Kingdom, and Poland to spend a week living together and, in many cases, meeting for the first time.
As you can imagine, the offsite is both a working event and a social occasion for the team, with focus split between planning for the future and spending time together. We run workshops to inform strategy, feedback sessions to create rapport, and games nights to build relationships. The latter is especially important for us as an otherwise all-remote company, because it’s often easier to work remotely if you have a better sense of who your colleagues are.
Given that the offsites are such international events, a common concern is about the environmental impact. Many people ask whether we could run offsites online instead, since we run all other meetings in this way. We have tried this in the past, but we’ve found it makes sessions more draining and less impactful. Some interactions are just better in person.
However, we do want to limit our environmental impact and minimize our carbon footprint. That’s why we work with Wren to offset the carbon our teams generate — not just for the offsite, but across all the work and travel they do.
The principle behind carbon offsetting is simple: if you emit a ton of CO2, you can balance out those emissions by also removing a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere - or preventing another ton. Wren lets us do this by analyzing our usage and redirecting some money from us towards causes with proven real-world impact.
This way, we offset the carbon footprint of our international travel through projects such as regenerative forestry and rainforest protection.
Unfortunately, Wren doesn’t have any projects specifically focused on supporting hedgehog wildlife, but that’s OK — it’s why we sponsor a hedgehog for every team member that joins the company.
Carbon offsetting won't fix the climate change crisis on its own - and we don’t view it as a reason to rest on our laurels. We take additional steps to minimize our carbon footprint such as limiting the use of single-use plastics at our events and in our merchandise.
However, while carbon offsetting isn’t a cure-all, it remains an effective tool in limiting our environmental impact. We’re excited to offer it as a benefit for all team members. You can check out other benefits we offer or even submit an issue in GitHub if you have ideas for how we can be even more climate friendly.
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