Harmonious Living - SA Businesses Learn How to Go Green

SA Businesses Learn How to Go Green

Ceri Balston

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Last month saw the first Green Business Conference and Exhibition in Johannesburg where delegates learnt how they could green their businesses and stay competitive.

Leading local and international experts from large global corporations such as BP, IBM and Toyota to our own Sasol, Nedbank, PriceWaterhouseCoopers shared their expertise and experiences with delegates from across the country.

Here's a brief overview of a few of the themes that were discussed that you might find useful in your business:

Carbon Footprint, Carbon Offsetting and Carbon Neutral
There are three steps to becoming a Carbon Neutral company, they are explained in brief below;

Undertake a Carbon Audit - this involves calculating the emissions released during each part of a company's activities, eg. IT, heating and air conditioning, travel. This is the company's Carbon Footprint.
Reduce Emissions - The carbon audit will reveal the most carbon intensive aspects of a company's business. Reducing emissions by as much as possible is a key aspect of becoming a carbon neutral and environmentally responsible company.
Carbon Offset - a second carbon audit will reveal the new carbon footprint of the company, often reflected as tonnes/year. This can be offset by buying into carbon offsetting schemes such as Trees for Africa who plant trees on the company's behalf which will in turn absorb CO2 during their lifetime. The company can then claim to be Carbon Neutral.

A recent example of a company that has achieved a Carbon Neutral status is the Backsberg wine estate, read more here - www.backsberg.co.za

Energy Savings = Cost Savings
One of the biggest differences a company can make in reducing emissions is to reduce the amount of energy/electricity that it consumes each month, this can also lead to major cost savings.
Globally the IT industry creates as much CO2 as the airline industry
Along with lighting and heating/air conditioning, IT equipment is amongst the largest energy consumers in a business, did you know for example that globally the IT industry creates as much CO2 as the airline industry?

So make sure that all office monitors and PCs are turned off at the end of the day and unplug laptop power supplies as they use power even if the laptop is turned off, and of course turn off all the lights.

Larger companies with data centres (rooms with rows of servers storing all the company's data) can follow IBM's lead who, when moving to energy efficient centres managed to reduce the energy consumption of their centres by 80%.

Triple Bottom Line
For centuries the success of a business was determined by 'the bottom line' which referred to the simple profit or loss it was making. In the last few years this has now evolved into the triple bottom line (or TBL), which includes "people, planet and profit" and measures a company's corporate social responsibility and ecological footprint alongside its profit.

In 2004 the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) launched the SRI (Socially Responsibility Investment) Index as a means to identify those companies listed on the JSE that have integrated the principles of the triple bottom line into their business activities.

Green Events
Events such as the Green Business Conference, and award ceremonies, concerts, fashion shows and other expos and conferences etc. are big business in South Africa, it will probably come as no surprise that they are also big carbon emitters. Simple ways to green events include;

Provide recycling bins so that event attendees can be involved in recycling their waste at source.
Purchase/use products that are labelled with any of the following logos; Fairtrade, Energy Star, Energy Rating, Proudly SA.
Provide locally sourced food.
Calculate the carbon footprint created by the event attendees' travel to the event and offset this through a carbon offsetting scheme.

Each of the delegates who attended the Green Business Conference indicated how far they had travelled to get there. This data was inputted into the Tress for Africa website to work out how many trees were needed to offset the emissions released.

VOIP Instead of Travel
A significant portion of a company's carbon footprint is accounted for by travel, especially for meetings. With a little planning and investment this can be reduced significantly.
VOIP doesn't necessarily mean forking out for expensive dedicated hardware
There are a number of dedicated VOIP hardware systems, such as Tandberg, which provide excellent video and voice quality as well as stability of service. It is also possible to integrate presentations so everyone on the call is looking at the same information. But VOIP doesn't necessarily mean forking out for expensive dedicated hardware as excellent systems such as the hugely popular Skype offer free alternatives.

Companies and employees need to ask themselves how much they can reduce their collective carbon emissions if they switched some of their meetings to VOIP. Again, the Rands savings of taking this approach can be significant.

Interestingly many climate change experts are now insisting that they conduct their talks via video link rather than travelling to deliver it in person.Greenwashing can significantly damage a company's brand image
Beware Green Washing
Simply put 'Green Washing' is a term used to describe companies that advertise positive environmental practises but act in the opposite way. Consumers want transparency when it comes to social and environmental responsibility declarations and companies that make such claims whilst attempting to hide damaging aspects of their activities will soon encounter significant negative publicity. Greenwashing can significantly damage a company's brand image.

A Parting Message
Another theme that cropped up a number of times through the conference was encouraging businesses to publicly take responsibility for their environmental impact and make it a part of the company's ethos and mission statement.

It was even declared that; "If your company's mission statement doesn't feature the word environment then you're probably not doing anything about it."

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