Among dubious phrases — “the cheque is in the post”, “I am from head office and I’m here to help” — the least credible phrase of the current decade has to be “carbon-neutral company”. What does that mean exactly?
Companies must be responsible about their level of carbon emissions but some are using the opportunity for cheap marketing which confuses the customer.
There are currently no strict rules for how companies should take responsibility for emissions. In the example set by the London 2012 Olympics, the reference footprint is 3.4 million tonnes, which includes all the emissions related to every tonne of concrete, steel, and glass that goes into constructing the facilities, all the way back to the raw material. The reference footprint for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics is 300,000 tonnes and does not include any construction emissions.
In business, it seems that each interpretation is different. Marks & Spencer aims to be carbon neutral by 2012 and has defined its footprint and how it proposes to achieve the objective.
Other companies think they can consider themselves carbon neutral by offsetting — a route that Friends of the Earth pours scorn on in a recent report. Offsetting is like having an affair and paying somebody else not to have sex.
So what will work for business? An innovative approach is to create a fund to invest in local schemes that save carbon and also provide some social benefit, such as retro-fitting social housing with energy-efficient technology.
First and foremost, companies must establish why they think they need to be responsible about emissions, what emissions they are taking responsibility for and how they propose to address them over time.
Without a long-term plan, we’ll never get companies out of neutral.
(Pic: Tambako the Jaguar cc2.0)
