Seedling x Goodwings: better data on your business travel emissions

For a lot of businesses, especially in people-heavy sectors like consulting, law and architecture, business travel is one of the biggest sources of Scope 3 emissions. It's also one of the most commonly estimated, with footprints built from spend rather than underlying trip data that more accurately reflects emissions. We've partnered with Goodwings to help make the collection of activity data easier for teams measuring their Scope 3 emissions.

Goodwings is a travel management platform that lets businesses book flights, hotels, rail and rental cars in one place, while automatically calculating the emissions from every trip.  By bringing that data into the Seedling platform, businesses can easily incorporate accurate business travel data into a holistic view of their overall business carbon footprint.

Who are Goodwings?

Goodwings is a B Corp certified travel management platform, founded in 2015 by Christian Møller-Holst and headquartered in Copenhagen. They help companies of all sizes, from startups to global enterprises, book and manage business travel in one place whilst helping keep their Scope 3 travel emissions accurate.

What sets them apart is that climate action is built into the core of how the platform works. Every trip is tracked in a real-time carbon dashboard that gives businesses downloadable, audit-ready data on their travel emissions. Goodwings then helps businesses reduce those emissions first, and offset what's left through high-quality, third-party verified climate projects, certified to standards like Gold Standard and the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), with a focus is on carbon removal and on scaling Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

How to more accurately measure the carbon footprint of business travel

Business travel, from flights to hotels, and rail to rental cars, falls under Scope 3, Category 6. For firms that travel a lot, for instance to client sites, Scope 3 category 6 is frequently the single largest part of their footprint.

Accurately tracking business travel emissions can be a challenge. Often, expenses data is the only information available on business travel, making spend-based estimates, where £s spent on travel is converted into tCO2e outputs, a common method for estimating travel emissions. Whilst spend-based estimates are a good starting point, their accuracy is limited because the price of a journey doesn't reliably reflect its emissions. For example, two passengers travelling on the same route may pay very different prices depending on when they booked, despite making the same journey. Ticket price alone is a poor proxy for emissions. Wherever possible, activity-based data (mode of transport, distance travelled and travel class) provides a much more accurate measure of business travel emissions. It also gives a truer picture of the impact of changes you make as a business, such as switching journeys from air to rail, even where rail is the more expensive option.

That's where the Seedling and Goodwings platforms line up perfectly. Goodwings measures the emissions of each trip directly, and that data can then feed into your Seedling footprint to replace an estimate with something grounded in activity data.

What this means if you're a Seedling client

If you already use Seedling, Goodwings gives you a way to manage business travel that has emissions measurement built in from the start.

There are two practical benefits:

• A simpler travel setup. Book flights, hotels, rail and rental cars in one place, with clear visibility over trips, spend and the emissions attached to them.
• Better footprint data. If you currently struggle to track activity-based data, emissions data from your Goodwings dashboard can improve the accuracy of the travel portion of your Seedling footprint, so you're reporting on real journeys rather than a spend-based proxy.

What this means if you're a Goodwings customer

If you've arrived from Goodwings, Seedling helps you take the next step beyond a single part of your operations.

We pair carbon management software with one-to-one support from a dedicated carbon adviser, so you can measure a holistic, full-scope footprint, build a credible plan to reduce emissions, and report with confidence, whether that's for a client or investor disclosure, CDP, B Corp, EcoVadis, and more. You don't need in-house carbon expertise to get there, and more than 500 businesses already trust us to simplify carbon accounting.

Our shared focus on measurable action

What brought Seedling and Goodwings together is a shared view that climate action has to be real and measurable, not just a claim.

In Christian's words:

"We look for partners who share our conviction that business must be a force for good. Seedling stood out immediately because they share that exact DNA."

And from our co-founder Aimée Tennant:

"Good technology should make doing the right thing easier. We're excited to partner with Goodwings because they're solving a real problem for businesses in exactly the right way. Together, we're helping teams measure their emissions more accurately with less effort."

Both businesses are trying to make an essential part of running a company simpler, and its impact clearer. Goodwings does that for business travel, and Seedling does it for your carbon footprint. Together, we’ve created a more joined-up way to manage travel and make practical progress on emissions.

If you're a Seedling client, you can now access Goodwings through our platform's Supplier Marketplace. And if you're a Goodwings customer who's ready to measure, analyse and report your full footprint, you can get started here.