A local association is hoping that B.C.’s independent contractors are keen to reduce their carbon footprints in any way possible – including their health-care plans.
The Independent Contractors and Business Association (ICBA), which is based in Burnaby and represents some 1,500 businesses throughout the province, has decided to take “going green” one step further by ensuring that its members’ visits to doctor’s offices aren’t hurting the environment.
Gord Stewart, president of ICBA Benefit Service, says the idea for an environmentally friendly extended-health insurance plan came about two years after the ICBA decided to go carbon neutral itself.
“We did it internally and then we started to look down our own supply chain – what couriers do we use? How do we commute?” Stewart explains. “We have 1,500 clients and we thought they might be interested in this.
“Health benefits and retirement programs are significant costs to businesses, so for businesses that have an environmental mindset like we do we thought they might be interested in having the option of purchasing these products on a green basis.”
The ICBA has teamed with Offsetters to help deliver the health plan.
Offsetters, which is also based in Vancouver, “offsets” carbon emissions through the sale of emission-reduction credits.
While those credits don’t necessarily reduce a carbon emission in Vancouver, they do reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere, having the effect of lowering the overall impact on the environment.
The ICBA hired Offsetters to measure the average impact an extended-health plan has on the environment – focusing specifically on the carbon that’s pumped into the environment when workers drive to their doctor’s or massage therapist’s office.
Stewart says ICBA is able to determine the average carbon footprint of a business based on its size.
The association then purchases emission-reduction credits to “offset” that impact.
ICBA setup an oxygen bar at the biennial Globe business and environment conference in Vancouver in March, inviting attendees to think differently about the impact of their extended benefit plans.
The carbon-neutral plan offers the same benefits at no additional cost to members.
In other words, the association picks up the tab for the cost of emission-offset credits.
The organization has generated a lot of interest from its members so far, and is hopeful that a number of them will sign up for the carbon-neutral plan this year.
Stewart believes that although the plan will have a minor affect on the overall reduction of carbon in the planet’s atmosphere, it dovetails well with businesses that are looking to take a lead on helping to protect the environment for future generations.
“I think what you’ve got right now are businesses and people that were perhaps disappointed that we didn’t come to a global agreement on carbon and are deciding just to make the decisions themselves,” Stewart says. “Nobody forced us to do this. We cared about it ourselves at a management level, we talked to our staff and they cared about it so we made the decision.
“We’re not going to change the whole world by doing this, but we might change a little bit of the world.”
