How we estimate CO₂ savings

When you hire a machine instead of buying it new, two things are avoided: part of the carbon it takes to manufacture a new machine, and the long-haul delivery of a new purchase. Our baseline is therefore a new equipment purchase: a shared, hired asset spreads its embodied manufacturing carbon across everyone who hires it, and a local vendor delivers over a far shorter distance than a national depot.

Each hire's estimated saving is the sum of two parts:

Manufacture CO₂ and expected hire cycles are set per equipment category and maintained by our team. If a category has no estimate yet, this part counts as zero — we never guess.

Straight-line (great-circle) distance between the geocoded centre points of the vendor and delivery postcodes, doubled for the round trip. Actual road miles are typically longer, so the delivery figure is conservative.When either postcode is unavailable or can't be geocoded, we use a conservative default of 8 miles. All savings are rounded to 0.1 kg.

The factors above are fixed platform values (methodology v1-indicative, last reviewed 2026-08-25). Each one is checked against the public sources below; we publish the sources so anyone can verify the basis of every figure we show.

1. Delivery saving per mile · Car-mile equivalent
   UK Government greenhouse gas conversion factors for company reporting — Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) / DEFRA — updated annually

   The reference dataset for UK freight (HGV) and average passenger-car emission factors that the adopted per-mile values are reviewed against.

2. Tree equivalent
   UK Woodland Carbon Code — carbon sequestration guidance — Scottish Forestry / Forest Research

   UK forestry carbon-sequestration reference used to sanity-check the adopted per-tree annual absorption figure (attributed FSC UK average). Used for illustration only — never as a saving.

3. Equipment manufacture CO₂ · expected hire cycles
   Per-category estimates maintained by the Just Hire It team — Just Hire It admin — sources recorded per category

   Category factors are set and maintained in the admin panel with a source note per category. Categories without an estimate contribute zero — the platform never guesses.

4. Environmental claims — legal basis
   Green Claims Code: making environmental claims on goods and services — Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)

   The consumer-protection guidance (now underpinned by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024) that all published carbon claims are written to comply with.

5. Environmental claims — advertising
   CAP Code Section 11: Environment — Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) / Committee of Advertising Practice

   UK advertising rules for environmental claims — the basis for labelling every figure as an indicative estimate.

Environmental claims made to UK consumers must be truthful, substantiated and clear under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, as explained in the CMA's Green Claims Code and the ASA's CAP Code Section 11. Here is how every carbon figure on the platform meets those principles:

• Truthful and accurate — figures are always labelled as estimates, never as measured or certified savings, and the full formula and factors are published on this page.
• Clear and unambiguous — every surface that shows a CO₂ figure carries the same disclaimer: “Indicative estimate — methodology pending UK accreditation”.
• No material information omitted — the baseline (a new equipment purchase), the straight-line distance basis, the default-distance fallback and the zero-when-unknown rule for category factors are all disclosed here.
• Fair and meaningful comparisons — tree and car-mile equivalents are illustrations of scale using published UK factors; they are never counted as savings or presented as offsets.
• Substantiated — each factor traces to the public source listed above, and the version and calculation date are stored with every booking so any certificate can be re-derived and audited.
• No offsetting or neutrality claims — we do not claim your hire is “carbon neutral”, “net zero” or offset. The figure is an estimate of emissions avoided by hiring rather than buying new.

If you believe any figure or claim on the platform is inaccurate or misleading, contact us via Help & support and we will review it against this methodology.

• Every figure is an indicative estimate, labelled as such wherever it appears: “Indicative estimate — methodology pending UK accreditation”.
• V1 is not a certified carbon measurement and is not yet accredited to a UK carbon-reporting standard. A refined, accreditation-grade methodology is planned for a later phase.
• Estimates are calculated when a booking completes and never change retroactively — your certificate shows the figures as calculated at the time.
• Actual savings vary with equipment age, usage and transport specifics; the methodology is deliberately conservative where data is missing.