Meet the Founders Making Carbon Accounting Accessible

We caught up with founders of Bath-based Seedling, Aimée Tennant and Blair Spowart, to talk about the story behind Seedling, the biggest myths around measuring your carbon footprint, and why they think perfect data is overrated when it comes to getting started.

Seedling is a Bath-based carbon management platform founded by husband-and-wife team Aimée Tennant and Blair Spowart. Aimée leads our commercial strategy and customer growth, while Blair leads product and technology, and client delivery. In the early days we did absolutely everything ourselves, but today we’re fortunate to have a brilliant team of specialists who have helped us deliver far greater impact for our clients than we could ever have achieved on our own.

We wanted to build a business that could make a meaningful contribution to tackling climate change, so started exploring opportunities in sustainability. 

At the time, Blair had taken on responsibility for ESG where he was working, and through that experience it became clear that existing carbon accounting solutions weren’t built for small and mid-market businesses. The options available seemed to fall into three camps: expensive consultancy-led projects built around spreadsheets, enterprise platforms designed for large organisations, or simple online calculators that lacked the rigour businesses needed.

At the same time, more and more businesses needed to measure, reduce, and report carbon emissions, but didn’t have the in-house expertise to navigate the process.

We built Seedling around the idea that software should do the heavy lifting, like collecting data, automating calculations and reporting, while experienced carbon consultants guide customers through the process, review the results and help them build a practical reduction plan. That combination makes carbon accounting faster, more affordable and far more effective than either software or traditional consultancy alone.

Many businesses assume they need perfect data before they can measure their emissions, but that’s rarely the case. The first footprint is about establishing a credible baseline using the information you already have. Once you have that, you can identify your biggest emission hotspots and improve the quality of your data over time.

We’ve learned that building a great business is really about building a great team.

In the beginning we tried to do everything ourselves, which is probably true for most founders. Looking back, the major steps forward have come from trusting talented people who are better than we are in their own areas of expertise. That’s been one of the biggest mindset shifts for us.

Focus on solving a very specific problem for a very specific group of customers.

It’s tempting to build something that works for everyone, but businesses have very different needs. For instance, a multinational with a dedicated 10-person strong sustainability team needs a completely different experience to a mid-market organisation where carbon is managed by an over-stretched sustainability team of 1, or an Ops lead with no carbon accounting expertise at all. The more clearly you understand your audience, the more valuable your product becomes.

AI is rightly generating a lot of discussion because of its own environmental impact, and that’s why we’re focussed on applying it selectively to solve high-value problems, rather than using it for its own sake. A prime example of that, is how it can help businesses make better sustainability decisions. We’ve already started integrating AI into Seedling, using it to automate time-consuming tasks such as emissions factor matching, and we’re continuing to explore how it can make carbon accounting faster and more accurate.

Used responsibly, AI can process large, complex datasets in seconds, automate repetitive tasks and surface insights that would previously have taken hours to uncover. That means businesses can spend less time gathering data and more time acting on it, which is where the real value lies.

We’re also excited to see the industry’s growing emphasis on data quality. A few years ago, most small and mid-market teams were looking for quick estimates to satisfy an immediate requirement. Increasingly, businesses need accurate, evidence-backed carbon footprints that reflect the impact of their reduction initiatives and support customer reporting. It’s a sign that the market is maturing, with the focus shifting from simply measuring emissions to building credible, data-backed decarbonisation strategies.

It can feel like there’s a new framework or regulation every few months, but the good news is that they all rely on the same foundation.

Some businesses will need to report directly because of regulation, while others will be asked for the same information by customers, investors or procurement teams responding to those requirements. Whether you’re reporting under a regulation, completing an EcoVadis assessment, pursuing B Corp certification, responding to a CDP request or providing emissions data to a customer, they all rely on the same foundation.

That foundation is a robust Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas inventory, measured in line with the GHG Protocol. If businesses invest in getting that core dataset right, they’ll be well placed to respond to new regulations, reporting frameworks and customer requests as they emerge.

Many businesses think they need far more data and in-house expertise than they actually do, before they can start measuring their emissions.

The reality is that almost every organisation has enough information to establish a reliable baseline. It’s much more valuable to understand where your biggest sources of emissions are today than to spend months waiting for perfect data that may never arrive.

Another common concern is greenwashing. Businesses often worry they’ll be criticised if they publish a footprint before everything is perfect, but that’s rarely what’s expected. Customers increasingly value transparency over perfection, and want to see businesses taking the first steps towards reducing their environmental impact. Be clear about your methodology, support your claims with data, avoid overstating your progress, and show how you’re improving over time. That’s what builds trust.