What is a Carbon Footprint?

The phrase carbon footprint is used to describe the total amount of Carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for which a business (or individual) is responsible. The complete footprint of a business includes a wide range of GHG emissions; from direct use of fuels and electricity to indirect impacts, such as employee travel or ‘embedded’ emissions in products and services provided.

The United Nations Greenhouse Gas protocol classifies GHG emissions into three types:

1. Direct emissions that result from business activities
Typically these are those that result from combustion of fuels purchased by the organization such as gas, fuel oil and petrol. In addition, some businesses will directly emit other greenhouse gases. For example, the manufacture of some chemicals produces nitrous oxide – a potent greenhouse gas.

2. Emissions from the use of electricity
Electricity is produced from a wide range of sources, including nuclear and renewable which do not directly produce GHGs. However, in the UK around 75% is produced through the combustion of fossil fuels with the resultant emission of carbon dioxide. The business is not directly in control of the emissions, but, by purchasing the electricity, it is indirectly responsible for the release of the CO2.

3. Indirect emissions from products and services
Every product or service that is purchased and used by a business has ‘embedded’ GHG emissions. That is GHGs have been emitted during the manufacture and delivery of the product or service. There are also emissions associated with the downstream use and disposal of products.
So, producing a complete footprint including all three types of emissions can be quite a complex task. EcoCare concentrate on the reduction of the first two types of emission, over which a business has control and which are far easier to reduce.
Carbon footprints are usually calculated to include all greenhouse gases and are expressed in tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e).

EcoCare

Forget the environment for a moment. To survive, let alone prosper, in business today, needs an iron determination to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Reducing your carbon footprint might seem a long way from the day to day challenge of running your business efficiently and profitably - think again - you may find that in fact carbon footprinting is the quickest way to do just that. EcoCare is a completely independent, not-for-profit organization, which help scustomers to determine their carbon footprint and identify easy cost saving opportunities, by reducing consumption of both energy and water; this is how we do it:

What can you save?

In our experience a typical medium sized business spending £50,000 pa on energy can save over £10,000 by implementing our recommendations. This, of course, means that a 20% reduction in your carbon footprint is also achieved. Your customers will be impressed with that!

Benefits of carbon footprinting

The benefits of determining a carbon footprint for your companies operations are numerous:

• - It enables your company to report your performance on greenhouse gas emissions – many companies like to include a statement on GHG emissions in their annual report
• - It identifies opportunities to reduce emissions and then measure the reductions
• - Significant cost savings can be achieved for rweduction projects with very short payback times through managing resources and implementing good environmental practice
• - It will improve improve your reputation in the martket place and generate impressive PR by enabling you to communicate