Last Updated on April 7, 2024 by Umer Malik
Businesses have many responsibilities. This includes responsibilities to customers, employees, business partners, and even the US government. However, one responsibility that often goes ignored is the business’s responsibility to the environment. What your company does matters and can certainly harm natural ecosystems and the world at large. Thankfully, there are steps companies can take to lessen their carbon footprint.
Implement Carbon Offsets
Although the idea has sometimes been mocked even in cartoons like King of the Hill, obtaining carbon offsets is a viable strategy for lowering your total carbon footprint as a company gradually evolves towards greater energy efficiency. If you can’t afford to make the investments needed to achieve a greener business now, using carbon offsets can allow you to do some good until you are in that better position and can make more substantial changes.
A carbon offset can be conceptualized as a kind of credit that a company buys for a specific amount of carbon released into the atmosphere due to their operations. These credits are then spent on efforts to lower pollution and remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The credits will then be paid who will act to remove a certain amount of carbon from the atmosphere or to perform some other equally environmentally beneficial activity such as planting new trees. If the number of carbon credits bought and spent is equal to the amount of carbon a company releases into the atmosphere, that company can be thought of as having achieved virtual carbon neutrality.
Implement a Software Monitoring Solution
One of the reasons why pollution and carbon emissions have gotten so bad is that many companies are completely ignorant of just how much carbon they release into the atmosphere. Becoming better educated on your total carbon footprint is not necessarily easy since tracking these things is a very technical matter. Overall, one of your energy-efficient solutions should certainly be a software-based carbon emission monitoring system.
Such a system should be used to monitor things like your indoor and outdoor lighting, the operation of your HVAC system, factory equipment energy consumption, electric vehicle charging stations, office computer systems, and many other things. You’ll have a much clearer view of just how your energy consumption happens in your company. The same software often has analytical features that can then allow you to use this information to produce suggestions on how to most effectively lower your energy consumption and your overall carbon footprint.
Recycle
Regarding your carbon footprint, you have to consider everything you buy for your factory, offices, stores, and other business operations. It isn’t just about the electricity you use or the gas you burn. It’s also about the electricity, fuel, and other resources that are expended to manufacture the things you use in your business.
Recycling may seem like generic advice for going green as a business, but it’s advice that works. If you, for example, purchase office furniture secondhand, new office furniture does not have to be manufactured to meet the demand. There are many things your business can recycle or purchase second-hand. Doing so is likely to save you a lot of money in the process.
Utilize Renewable Energy
Lastly, you can lower your carbon footprint by substituting renewable energy sources for carbon-based fuel. One common choice is solar energy panels. Today’s solar energy panels are more efficient than ever before at transforming the sun’s rays into energy that can be used by businesses to power their operations.
While you may not be able to rely only on solar energy, it can certainly be used to lower the amount of electricity you need to use from the local power grid that could originate from coal plants and other carbon energy sources.
Another great choice is wind power. If you can afford to erect a wind turbine on your property, the amount of energy produced could be enough to provide your facilities with a constant supply of electricity during the work day.
One wind turbine can produce six million kilowatt hours of electricity every single year. That’s a lot of energy. Utilizing renewable energy sources to charge your electric vehicles can compound the benefit you receive.
Bottom Line
The world is facing some serious challenges from issues like global warming and pollution. All responsible companies should take part in helping to tackle these challenges. There are many ways to do so. Consider options such as purchasing carbon offsets, implementing energy monitoring software, recycling, and utilizing renewable energy sources. It will make a difference.
