Pollen’s approach to landscape architecture reimagines the role of landscapes as a lasting solution to generational challenges like climate change, whilst hand in hand creating places of connection, engagement and wellbeing.
Since being established more than a decade ago, we have built a reputation for being practical and creative in the way we approach our work. We’re also versatile; our projects have spanned a wide range of disciplines and settings, from the inner city to regional, rural and remote locations.
Based in Brunswick and Castlemaine, Pollen is a certified carbon neutral, sustainable design studio. We prioritise work that reduces carbon impacts and makes sustainable choices that tip the balance back towards nature. Promoting improved biodiversity, healthy ecosystems and reducing barriers to inclusion are essential elements of our commitment to community-focused, climate-positive design.
Sitting at the heart of Pollen’s approach is an absolute commitment to engendering a sense of shared ownership in all our projects – among clients, collaborators and communities.
More than delivering projects, we see ourselves as nurturing them. And this means nurturing the people who called upon us and the communities who are at the centre of the work we do. In the spirit of this approach, we advocate for and support Traditional Owners having a voice in our projects and to be leaders, as caretakers of the Country.
Our work fosters a greater connection between people and their environment, reawakening our shared love of nature to build communities with heart.
Climate Change Action
Pollen Studio achieved carbon neutral certification on 06/07/2021. To achieve this status and become carbon neutral Pollen Studio undertook the following process:
- Commissioned a NoCO2 audit from CRI to measure their carbon footprint for FY2020. CRI’s NoCO2 audit follows the standards outlined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (1), in addition to the international standard ISO 14064.1 (2).
- Have committed to offset their unavoidable emissions through the purchase of units in approved projects under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and Gold Standard, and
- Committed to ongoing annual auditing of their emissions.
What does NoCO2 Certification mean?
By meeting the requirements of the NoCO2 Program, Pollen Studio is certified as a Carbon Neutral Business by CRI; can be promoted and marketed as such and can display the NoCO2 Logo issued by CRI.
What Carbon Credit Projects does Pollen Studio purchase offsets from?
Cookstoves in Developing Nations
Nearly three billion people around the world burn wood, charcoal, animal dung, or coal in open fires or in inefficient stoves and without a chimney for daily cooking and heating. This reliance on inefficient cookstoves and fuels leads to a wide variety of environmental problems including deforestation, air pollution and climate change. Daily exposure to toxic smoke from traditional cooking practices is one of the world’s biggest, but least well-known killers.
Penetrating deep into the lungs of its victims, this acrid smoke causes a range of deadly chronic and acute health effects such as pneumonia, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart disease, as well as low birth-weights in children born to mothers whose pregnancies are spent breathing toxic fumes from traditional cookstoves. Women and children must risk their safety, health, and sometimes their lives, to search for and collect firewood in order to cook food over smoky, polluting open fires.
The Projects:
The Cookstoves in Developing Nations project disseminates efficient wood and charcoal cookstoves to reduce dependency on traditional biomass fuels. Replacing traditional cookstoves with fuel-efficient stoves in households and restaurants reduces greenhouse gas emissions, relieves pressure on local forests and assists in reducing the incidence of chronic respiratory disease, improving livelihoods in poor communities.
Cookstoves in Developing Nations sources Verified Carbon Standard and Gold Standard carbon credits from countries including Peru, Uganda, Cambodia and China.
