Sustainability at Epos Now
At Epos Now, we know we're part of a larger world.
What is sustainability?
Sustainability means sticking around for the long haul and making sure that future generations can do the same. With the climate crisis now front and centre in the minds of everyone around the world, more and more businesses are seeking out ways to shrink their carbon footprint and restore their environments.
We're no different.
Epos Now’s sustainability goals
Epos Now is, and will continue to be, carbon neutral. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do more.
We want to be the leading, carbon-negative POS company. We want to make sure that we’re having a measurable, positive impact on the environment and the people being affected by things like climate change, deforestation, desertification, and chronic poverty.
Helping the environment
In order to achieve these goals, Epos Now has partnered with GiftTrees.
GiftTrees is a corporate social responsibility initiative dedicated to helping poorer communities create sustainable livelihoods that help the planet and lift people out of poverty. They work with companies all over the globe to raise money to plant trees in specific regions that will have the best impact.
To date, GiftTrees has helped plant more than 1.9 million trees, sequestering more than 2 million tons of CO2, and helping to end the cycle of poverty in countless communities.
How it works
We've partnered with GiftTrees to create a fantastic integration that works seamlessly with your POS device. It provides an easy way for restaurant diners to offset the environmental impact of their meal and to help save the planet.
Once your diners are given their bill for their meal, they have the option of paying a small donation of £1.23 that automatically appears on bills over £30, with manual donations for bills under £30. This donation goes towards buying a GiftTree.
Each GiftTree planted is credited to your restaurant, so you can view and track the impact that you and your diners are having. On their bill, guests can access a link to your restaurant’s showcase page.
On this page, they can learn more about the action you’re taking, and how it’s making a difference to communities across the world.
Carbon sequestration
While the primary function of a GiftTree is to relieve poverty, planting trees is also one of the best ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Food production and consumption are large contributors to global CO2 emissions. The average restaurant meal is responsible for 8-25 kg of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
However, a tree planted will, over the course of its lifetime, will sequester 1,000 kg of CO2. this means that the simple act of buying a GiftTree will offset the carbon footprint of a meal by 50-100 times.
Planting trees is great. But it also matters where they’re planted.
GiftTrees works with aid-reliant communities in the tropics. Research shows that a newly planted tree in the tropics can remove up to 50 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere each year during its growth period of 20–50 years; on the other hand, a tree in the temperate regions can take in 13 kilograms.
Young, quickly growing trees uptake significantly more carbon than mature trees with a slower growth rate. Warm and wet climates with long growing seasons also contribute to rapid plant growth and indirectly promote higher rates of carbon sequestration.
Empowering people
When talking about the environment and climate change, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers and metrics and forget the human factor. Climate change has a concrete impact on people’s lives all over the world.
Planting trees can help combat these effects.
Sustainability shouldn’t just be about reducing emissions. It should be about doing so in a way that makes people’s lives and livelihoods more likely to be around further down the road.
The benefits of trees
Food
Most GiftTrees are fruit trees providing fruits like mangos, papayas, oranges, and more. These fruits are an amazing source of vitamins, minerals, and fibres that many people don’t have access to.
Income
The surplus fruit collected from these trees can be sold at market. Many people use this income to pay for vital medicines and schooling for their children. Education is the best way of getting people out of poverty.
Health and wellness
The leaves and bark of certain trees can be used for various health and wellness purposes, such as free antibiotics and anti-inflammatories.
Sustainable environments
All Sustainably Run GiftTrees are planted in sustainable agroforests. These agroforests allow people to use small plots of land to the best advantage, with different crops cycling in and out throughout the year.
Prevent soil erosion
Trees prevent soil erosion by preventing splash erosion caused by rainfall, reducing the amount of soil in the water through transpiration, and physically blocking wind that soils soil away.
Prevent landslides
Tree roots reinforce soil layers, anchor the soil to bedrock and form buttresses against soil movement. Planting more trees can help protect communities in or near sloped landscapes.
Increase biodiversity
Trees in agricultural landscapes can provide more favourable habitats for soil biodiversity, through microclimate buffering and continuous supply of organic matter inputs.
Fertilizes soil
Trees help fertilize the surrounding soil by capturing nitrogen from the air and falling leaves. Their roots can also bring certain nutrients unreachable by certain crops to the surface.