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KNOW YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT Smart Biz quote: “Companies around the world have recognized that reducing their carbon footprints is not just good for the environment, it’s good for business.” (from carbonview pdf) Callout: Every business makes choices about the services, products and equipment it uses. These choices have a significant effect on their environmental impact. Making the right choices can help build a positive, credible environmental message and reduce costs. Copy: A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent. 1. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane). We have direct control of these. 2. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use - those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown. To put it very simply – the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf. (above from: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/carbonfootprint.html) The average American is responsible for about 10 tons of CO2 emissions annually in direct emissions (home, car, travel) and about 23 tons annually in total throughout the economy, including when we buy clothes, food, and other goods and services. (carbonfund.org) In many respects, the scientific debate is irrelevant. For the business community, climate change represents an impending market shift – one that will both alter existing markets and create new ones. It will not be unlike shifts that have occurred in the past, when consumer needs changed, or technology advanced, and some companies declined while others rose to take their place. In the 1980s alone, computers eliminated the typewriter industry, compact discs replaced phonograph records, and the Bell System’s demise wrought structural changes in telecommunications. New competitive environments will create new supply and demand for emission-reducing technologies, new financial instruments for emissions trading, new mechanisms for transferring technologies globally and new pressures to retire historic sources of greenhouse gases (GHG). In short, as the market shift of climate change looms on the business horizon, the argument against action is increasingly harder to make. The debate is thus strategic (not scientific) and companies taking voluntary climate action are not practicing philanthropy or pure social responsibility (although many couch their activities in the language of ‘doing the right thing’). In fact, many companies are agnostic about the science of climate change. They engage the climate-change issue as a way to protect their strategic investments and to search for business opportunities in a changing market landscape. From (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Business_strategy_and_climate_change#Introduction) Real-life situation/Sidebar Callout: Example of a CEO who reduced and offset the co2 emissions from their company and saved X/did X/resulted in X.