Secretly pledges to reach climate positivity by 2026

Secretly pledges to reach climate positivity by 2026 Photo courtesy of Shore Fire Media.  

The Secretly Group has announced a “major commitment to long-term, environmental sustainability.” More specifically, the group — whose members are Secretly Distribution, Secretly Publishing, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, Saddest Factory Records, Secretly Canadian, Ghostly International, The Numero Group, and 37d03d — has pledged to eliminate its negative climate impact by its 30th anniversary in 2026.

In Secretly’s statement, the company says sustainability has “always been a core value.” The group admit they released 150 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in 2019 but says it cut this number down to 116 in 2020 and has bought “high-quality, third-party certified carbon offsets to zero out the impact of those GHG emissions.”

In the future, Secretly pledges to focus on cutting their footprint further, rather than relying solely on offsets to prove their sustainability, as many corporations do. The statement lays out the plan in five steps:

1. Investing in energy efficiency throughout Secretly buildings
2. Assessing opportunities to replace natural gas equipment with electric options
3. Measuring and reducing the company’s Scope 3 emissions
4. Switching to 100% renewable energy
5. Being a founder investor and user in IMPALA’s bespoke Carbon Calculator for the music industry

Recognizing its inability completely eradicate GHG emissions in a matter of years, the group says it will continue to offset its future negative impact — and five times its 2019 impact — by helping to fund “rigorously selected” global climate initiatives through Native.

Read The Secretly Affiliates Sustainability Plan in full here.