Commit Your Company to Net Zero: 8 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Business Carbon Footprint
It’s time to get serious about reducing your company's carbon footprint. If you’ve read our recent articles, you understand why your footprint matters, and how you can measure it, so it’s time to talk about what you can do to reduce it.
In case you haven’t read our other articles, let’s address the elephant in the room.
What’s the big deal with a business carbon footprint? And why should you measure yours?
Besides climate change being a generation-defining issue destined to shape the lives of your children and grandchildren, managing your carbon footprint has a huge impact on your business. If you calculate and cut your carbon footprint, you’ll give your business a big boost.
You’ll stand out from your competition. You’ll attract new customers. You’ll improve your profit margins. You’ll boost your brand's perception. You’ll elevate employee satisfaction. You’ll attract new investors. You’ll get ahead of some policy changes and take advantage of others.
It’s a huge opportunity you don’t want to miss. If you’re ready to get started, your first step is to actually measure your footprint to see where you’re at. You can learn how in our previous article or reach out for a consultation.
If you’ve got your footprint done and you’re ready to reduce it and get all the benefits that come with that, we’ve got what you need right here.
How to use your carbon footprint for carbon reduction
The first step to reducing your emissions is understanding where they come from. With your footprint calculated, you’ll have all your emissions broken down by scope and category. This will give you a sense of your largest sources of emissions and how you can reduce them.
Keep in mind, your ability to reduce your footprint and cut carbon will depend on how detailed your emissions inventory is. If you only have a broad strokes overview of your emissions, you’ll have a hard time reducing them.
On the other hand, if you spend the time upfront to get into the nitty-gritty details, you’ll have an easier time getting rid of emissions.
With your carbon calculations handy, you’ll want to identify the largest and easiest to eliminate areas, so you can prioritize them. It’s always good to target the low-hanging fruit early on for quick, confidence-boosting wins ahead of the long haul for the more challenging emissions areas. On the flip side, understanding challenging, problem areas early will help you get a head start on a long-term plan to get these out of your operations.
The rest of this guide will help you come up with some ideas for what you can do for emissions areas across your footprint.
The Limits of Carbon Footprint Reduction
As an SME, your work is important because it will pave the way for bigger changes down the road. By eliminating emissions from your company, you’ll be helping other individuals and businesses to do the same. You’ll also pressure your partners and your competitors to follow suit. Your work might seem small, but by inspiring other people in your industry to follow your example, you’ll help change the world.
So, if you’re ready to go, here’s what you can do.
8 Essential Strategies for Reducing Your Business’s Carbon Footprint
1) Invest in renewable energy
Unless your utility already has a 100% clean energy grid – which the chances are, they don’t – one of the biggest things you can do is support the growth of carbon-free energy.
How you do this will depend on the size of your company, the electric utility in your area, and other considerations.
If your company owns your building, the best thing you can do is install solar panels on site. If you don’t own, you could talk to the owner about installing solar and the arrangements to make that happen.