Lloyd Lee: Business development and marketing manager, Climate Smart
Measure first: Many businesses are implementing sustainable practices such as recycling programs and replacing inefficient equipment. In greening your business, take time to understand where you are in the first place. Your carbon footprint quantifies the environmental impact of your organization’s activities. Begin by establishing a baseline, so you can focus attention on where the most good can be achieved. Also, if you don’t measure your starting point you’re missing a great storytelling opportunity, because you can’t measure the progress you made.
Look for waste: Reducing your carbon footprint means looking for waste, and not just the landfilled kind, but also wasteful operations. One of our clients – a coffee distributor – found that transportation made up most of its footprint and that its vehicles could be improved. By switching to hybrids, the company cut fuel use by 64%. A contractor found it was sending a huge amount of waste to landfill and spending a lot of money to do so. By determining how much site waste could be recycled and working with its hauler to separate out recoverable material, its cut waste by 35% and now saves $65,000 annually.
Engage your staff: As you’re putting these practices in place, involve everyone from the start, and make it fun. One office introduced a new aspect (commuting, electricity, paper) to tackle each month, with prizes and events. Employees weren’t overwhelmed by a bunch of changes all at once, and the long rollout meant that over time, green became the new normal. Another business used friendly competition, assigning each employee his or her own bin so everyone could see who was throwing out the least. The rewards: waste dropped by 50%, and a quarter of the savings from their various initiatives were redistributed to staff.
Curtis Dorosh: Manager, green building services, Lighthouse
You need to start by quantifying your carbon footprint before you can begin to reduce it. Here are some questions I have found helpful.
- Decide at a corporate level why you’re tracking emissions. This needs to happen at the executive table and be communicated throughout the organization. The decision to make B.C.’s public service carbon-neutral was included in the Liberals’ 2007 throne speech.
- Determine a baseline year if reduction targets are being pursued. For example, 20% below 2006 levels by 2020. Determine reduction targets and communicate them throughout the organization. British Columbia tied financial incentives ($25/tonne fee to CO2 emissions) to reduction targets of carbon neutral in 2010 for the public service. Without incentives like affixing a cost to emissions or tying emission reductions to executive performance plans, carbon reductions won’t be achieved.
- Put value on carbon even if the money stays in the organization but goes toward environmental initiatives fund.
- Can you develop a green fleet strategy? Focus on vehicle selection, use, driver training and right sizing of vehicles and your corporate fleet.
- How will you implement strategies? A good way to start is with a staged or phased approach (i.e., one facility at a time or one region)
- Are your employees on board? Establishing green teams or finding executive champions will help achieve green initiatives. Start a discussion with your employees and ask for their input on how to reduce carbon emissions.
- Any success stories? Celebrate successes because “success breeds success.”
Susan Todd: Principal, Solstice Sustainability Works
Approach carbon reduction as you would any other significant business initiative: strategically. Look at your value chain to see where the greatest opportunities lie. Consider the energy you use in your own operations, the carbon embedded in the supply chain, how your customers use energy when using your products or services, how your employees get to work or how you could influence your industry.
Ask yourself some strategic questions:
- Where in the chain can we achieve the best return on our carbon reduction investments?
- Where are the greatest opportunities for leveraging our efforts to greater effect?
- Which reduction measures align best with our business strategy?
- Where should we take a leadership stance, and where should we follow best practice?
Measure your current footprint in broad strokes and make reasonable estimates about the parts of the value chain you can’t measure yet. Once you decide where you’re going to focus your efforts, do a more refined calculation using standard measurement protocols, such as the GHG Protocol.
Set both absolute (e.g., tonnes) and normative targets (e.g., tonnes per unit of production) with dates. The targets you set should take into account what others in your industry are doing, where legislation is heading, what scientists and carbon activists are advising and what your team tells you is possible.
Some carbon reductions can be accomplished through mainly technical means, such as switching to more efficient equipment, but there are usually human factors to consider. Include training, change management and stakeholder engagement in your plan.
