How to reduce your business’s carbon footprint

Every business must step up to the mark to reduce their carbon footprint. But where do they start? Olivia McGill outlines an action plan.

As the world transitions towards a low-carbon economy, businesses of all sizes need to operate more sustainably.

Large corporations have to meet stringent sustainability requirements so those environmental standards are being passed on to their suppliers, including SMEs.

So, what can you do to make a difference?

Calculate Your Emissions

The first thing to do to help you understand your footprint is to measure your current carbon emissions. This baseline sets the foundation for setting reduction targets. This includes measuring direct emissions from sources owned and controlled by your company. This could include company vehicles, boilers, generators and other equipment. You also need to measure indirect emissions from energy consumption, like electricity use. And then measure the emissions from things like waste disposal, business travel and employee commutes.  

Use Renewable Energy

Find out whether your electricity comes from renewable or non-renewable sources. Renewable energy is made from solar, wind, biomass, hydropower or other renewable sources. There are a plethora of green energy providers offering renewables. Make sure to find out whether your current provider has a renewable energy plan, if they don’t, look into one that can guarantee that their power comes from 100% renewable sources, as some use a mix of both. 

Choose Sustainable Web Hosting

Using sustainable web hosting is a significant positive step you can make to reduce your digital emissions. Green hosting minimises the impact of web hosting by reducing the carbon emissions created by the web host’s data centres. It does this by using renewable energy sources, reducing energy use and compensating for carbon footprint. 

Eco-friendly options include hosting companies that use renewable energy sources, carbon offsetting such as buying renewable energy credits or carbon offset credits (in Europe, these are called guarantees of origin, or GOs), technology that improves energy efficiency and energy-saving equipment. 

Use the Three Rs of Sustainability

To create a sustainable economy, we need to rethink how we reduce, reuse and recycle products to create less waste.  Moving to a circular economy could address 70% of global greenhouse emissions.  Business models such as sharing and repairing can be used. 

We all know that there is more to a circular economy than recycling but it’s still important, currently contributing to 8.6% global circularity. Recycling could improve if more effective changes are made up the ladder, such as thinking about product design, material use, and manufacturing and collection infrastructure. Business owners need to move away from the cheapest waste-management solutions, like landfill and incineration.

Choose Sustainable Suppliers

Your supply base has a massive impact on the overall sustainability of your business. Sustainability goals will only be achievable if your key suppliers are sustainable too. So, how can you spot sustainable suppliers and manufacturers?

The main things to ask when creating a sustainability barometer for suppliers are:

• Does the company source sustainable raw materials? Does it create waste during manufacturing?
• Does it have waste management or recycling programmes?
• Does it use clean energy? Does it track its greenhouse emissions and have strategies to reduce them?

Ways to find answers are to check if they use environmental management systems (EMS).

Companies that pass the evaluation for EMS have an eco-friendly track record and are serious about managing their environmental impact. You can also check whether they have a Corporate Social Responsibility programme in place. This is closely related to sustainability because CSR’s bottom line is “people, planet and profit”.

Detecting sustainability credentials is easy to do as organisations where environmental consciousness is important participate in sustainable programmes, meaning they have certifications they can attach to their brands. 

Useful resources for achieving your sustainability targets:

• How to write a sustainability plan for your business
• How might CSRD affect small businesses?
• Sustainability isn’t a nice to have, it’s a must have
• Sustainability: What you need to know in 2024