Most firms aren’t aware of what their carbon footprints are. Considering the time needed to calculate them this isn’t at all surprising
The Carbon Trust has recently revealed that just 1% of companies know the full extent of their emissions into the atmosphere. In a time of heightened awareness about the environment this sounds somewhat worying, and cynics might use it as evidence that businesses are still placing profit above the survival of the planet. However, it is easy to criticise especially when you are yet to calculate your own footprint and are not fully aware of what this entails.
There’s a pretty handy calculator on the Carbon Trust’s website which enables individuals and businesses to work out how much they emit. It’s easy to use, free and doesn’t take that long to complete. But the real difficulty lies in getting all the data in the first place. A carbon footprint is the calculation of all the emissions that you are directly and indirectly responsible for emitting. As you can imagine there’s a lot of data that needs to go into that and even with the calculating software online you are still going to have to put a fair amount of effort and time into collecting the information.
Householders can probably fulfil the task without a Herculean level of effort. You probably know how many miles you have driven, what your gas/electricity bill is, all the flights you have taken, most train journeys that you’ve made and can even make a rough guess at other indirect emissions that you have contributed to. Your figure might not be spot on accurate but you’ll be in the ballpark. But try doing this for a business, even a relatively small one, and you have a major project on your hands. It’s rather like working out your own footprint then being asked to do it for the rest of the street where you live.
Imagine just calculating the amount of miles your sales department covers. Now if each has a car which they use for all journeys then that might not be that difficult as there’s a recorded mileage. But if your staff are using a mix of planes, trains and cars, then toting up the relevant tallies for the last 12 months will be a nightmare job. Soon it becomes clear that if you want to calculate your footprint you are going to need a dedicated person to keep records up to date as you go. This might be a good thing and could also be a way of keeping spending down as well as cutting emissions. Most polluting your business does comes at a cost to you so in the long-term you’ll become more efficient. However, before critics slam businesses for not doing enough they should be more aware of the realities of what they are asking from them.