How we count
Plain answers to what net zero covers here, where the numbers come from, and what we don't claim.
What it covers
The whole life of the beef, from cradle to grave: growing the feed, raising the cattle (including their methane), harvest, cutting and packaging, transport, the store's refrigeration, cooking at home, and the beef that gets thrown away. Covering only the farm ("carbon neutral at the farm gate") or stopping at the processor ("cradle to gate") leaves a large share of the footprint out.
- Raising the cattleGrowing the feed · Cow-calf pasture · Backgrounding · Finishing
- Harvest and processingHarvest · Cutting · Packaging
- Getting it to youTrucking · The store's cooler
- In your kitchenFridge and freezer · Cooking · Leftovers and waste
However you store it, cook it, or share it, that part of the footprint is already counted, using U.S. averages plus the buffer.
Shipping isn't offered yet; orders are picked up. The studies already include getting the food to the store. When shipping comes, the shipping footprint will be added to each shipped order and covered the same way.
The number we use
42.7 kg CO₂e per kilogram of beef (19.4 kg per pound), from Putman, Rotz & Thoma (2023), Journal of Cleaner Production 402:136766. It's the national cradle-to-grave average for U.S. beef.
That study reports the footprint per kilogram eaten. We apply it to the weight you take home, which over-counts on purpose, because some beef is always wasted. Then we add a 20% buffer on top.
Per animal, that works out to about 12.0 t CO₂e for the 621 lb of take-home beef from an average steer, or 14.4 t with the buffer.
These are industry averages, not measurements of these farms. A farm-specific study is the next step, and the measurement reserve in every premium pays for it.
The credits
We buy nature-based carbon removal credits in whole tonnes: carbon drawn out of the air and stored in soil and plants, so every premium also pays for good land management (today: Nature-based soil carbon removal, ICVCM CCP-labelled). We retire them on the registry before we sell against them, in the name of Evergreen Exchange customers. Each net-zero purchase is then assigned its share in the public ledger. The ledger never assigns more than has been retired.
As shoppers show the demand, the aim is for farms to generate these credits on their own land.
Where your money goes
The farm gets its usual price for the food. The rest goes to the credit pool: about 80% buys credits, and 20% is held for measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV), such as soil tests, a farm-specific study, and third-party review.
What we don't claim
We don't say any product is emissions-free or carbon neutral. It still has emissions, and "carbon neutral" usually covers only the farm. We cover the whole footprint, cradle to grave. Net zero here means we retire credits for the purchase's estimated footprint, so its net footprint is zero.
Water and land use are shown on the Sustainability Facts panel from the same studies, but they aren't offset. Biodiversity isn't measured yet.
How the numbers get better
Every factor carries a version (2026.1 today), and every purchase records the version it used. When we switch to farm-specific numbers, old records keep the numbers they were sold with, and the change is published here.