FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

This in a social and ecological context refers to the effect or influence that actions or activities have on society and the environment. Social impact involves changes to community well-being, like improved education or health, while ecological impact relates to the environment, like reducing pollution or conserving resources. It's about the positive or negative outcomes of what we do on people and the planet.

In the context of social and ecological projects, "output" and "outcome" have specific meanings:

Output: Refers to the immediate products or services resulting from activities. For example, planting 1000 trees or conducting 50 educational workshops are outputs. They are quantifiable and easy to measure.

Outcome: Represents the longer-term effects or changes due to the outputs. In our examples, outcomes might be improved air quality from the trees or higher literacy rates from the workshops. Outcomes are about the impact and are often less immediately measurable.

In essence, outputs are what you do, while outcomes are the differences made by what you do.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 global goals set by the United Nations in 2015. They aim to address global challenges like poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. The SDGs are a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030.

IRIS+ is a system for measuring, managing, and optimizing impact. It's developed by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). IRIS+ provides a comprehensive set of metrics for impact investors to measure and report on the social and environmental performance of their investments. It helps ensure that impact investments are effective and transparent.

This refers to the measure of the impact that a person, organization, or product has on the environment and society.

The ecological footprint in business context represents the environmental effect, often in terms of the amount of resources required to deliver a product, service and for general business operations. It's a way to quantify the demand placed on Earth's ecosystems.

The social footprint represents the social effect, focusing on the (in general negative) effects that influences have on social systems. It might include factors like employment practices, community engagement, and the overall contribution to or detriment of societal well-being.

These footprints are useful for understanding and managing the sustainability of actions and practices.

"Insetting" and "offsetting" are two approaches to managing and balancing social and ecological footprints:

Offsetting involves compensating for one's negative environmental or social effects by supporting external projects that act against the burden on nature's resources or create positive social outcomes elsewhere. For example, a company might offset its carbon or plastic waste emissions by funding reforestation & plastic waste removal projects in a different location.

Insetting in contrast means integrating sustainability actions into the core business operations and supply chain. It's about making improvements within one's own activities or direct sphere of influence. An example is a company reducing its carbon or plastic footprint by adopting renewable energy sources or using plastic substitutes in its own operations.

As corporates often are not able to transform quickly enough to reach their insetting goals in a short timespan, offsetting can at least support external projects acting quickly on a global scale against certain footprints of the corporate's operations. Offsetting should always be accompanied by strict insetting strategies & goals that the corporate reports against regularly, with the intention to reduce the needed offsetting amount over time.

This refers to the philanthropic efforts by companies where they provide support to community projects, non-profits, or social causes. This can be in the form of donations, grants, sponsorships, or employee volunteering time. It's a way for companies to contribute positively to society and often aligns with their corporate social responsibility strategies.

Corporate gifting in that context is a specialized form of giving. It is based upon the philantrophic efforts mentioned above but goes one step further in presenting these to their customers, partners, employees or other stakeholders in form of gifts. As an example: a company decides to spend money on a certain social project based on the amount of employees in their company. This later then can be presented in various (tangible) forms towards their employees as a xmas gift.

These are credits generated from projects that reduce, avoid, or sequester carbon emissions. Entities or individuals purchase these certificates to offset their own carbon footprint. Each certificate typically represents a specific amount of metric tons of CO₂ per credit reduced or sequestered. The projects generating these credits can vary widely, from reforestation to renewable energy initiatives.

Corporate Social Responsibility refers to a business model and practices where companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their business operations and interactions with stakeholders. It's about companies taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on society and the environment, often going beyond legal requirements. CSR activities can include ethical labor practices, environmental stewardship, community engagement, and sustainable development.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is a directive by the European Union aimed at enhancing and standardizing the sustainability reporting requirements for companies. It expands on the previous Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), requiring a larger range of companies to disclose information on how they manage social and environmental challenges. The goal is to improve transparency and provide stakeholders with more consistent and comparable data on corporate sustainability.

This stands for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. These are businesses that maintain revenues, assets, or a number of employees below certain thresholds. The exact criteria can vary by country, but generally, SMEs are characterized by their limited scale compared to larger corporations. They play a vital role in most economies, particularly in terms of job creation and innovation.

Think of a blockchain as a digital record book. Instead of keeping records in one place (like a single computer or server), the information is copied and spread across a network of computers. Each page of this record book is called a "block," and they're all linked together in a chain.

Whenever new information is added, it's put into a new block, and everyone's copy of the record book updates. This makes it really hard to change older information because you'd have to change it on every single copy at the same time.

So, blockchain is like a shared, super-secure digital diary that a bunch of people have copies of and can write in, but no one can easily change what's already been written. This is why it's used for things like digital money (crypto currencies) or for NFTs and keeping track of who owns what.

In the context of blockchain, a "token" is a type of digital unit, often used as a way to represent assets or specific rights within a blockchain network. Tokens can be created, transferred, and stored over the blockchain. They are often used to represent things like ownership, a share in an asset, access rights, or even as a currency.

For example, at LOOMPACT we use special tokens (NFTs) to represent social and environmental impacts in a tradable form. Tokens are versatile and can be tailored to various uses and ecosystems within the blockchain world.

In the context of blockchain, an "NFT" stands for Non-Fungible Token. It's a unique type of token that represents ownership of a specific, one-of-a-kind item or asset, making it different from interchangeable tokens like cryptocurrencies. NFTs can represent digital or physical assets, such as artwork, collectibles, real estate or for other use types.

in the case of LOOMPACT-based NFTs, they are unique certificates of realized social or environmental impact. Each NFT has distinct information or attributes that make it unique and verifiable on the blockchain, providing proof of ownership and origin.