At Radicle, our favourite activity is to transform the realities of the companies we work with by bringing environment care solutions to life for them. An early part of our bold and nimble process is to identify a company’s carbon footprint. We dig deep into our clients’ operations – questioning, iterating, calculating, and documenting.
Let’s break down carbon footprinting. What gets measured matters, and it’s more important than ever to know how your business impacts the environment. Enter the carbon footprint: a snapshot of the annual greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from a company’s operations. This information is the first step to understanding your supply chain and identifying where environmental improvements exist.
So, why does this matter? The ultimate benefit of a carbon footprint is that it not only informs climate goals but also serves as a blueprint for a sustainability strategy – one that arms you with an action plan to deal with vulnerabilities. Take it from Rori Cowan, our US Director of Business Development, who’s a huge advocate of carbon footprinting: “whether it’s because your company wants to get ahead of regulations or just understand how it can do better, the data you acquire from this exercise has immense value, and you can’t unlock that value until you know your carbon footprint. The value can materialize in many forms, such as understanding your competitive advantage or being able to generate carbon offsets in some cases.”
Want to be unstoppable – or, as we call it at Radicle, “anti-fragile” as a company? Carbon footprinting has become not just a nice to have but an essential way to access funding sources. We know that identifying business vulnerabilities can sound scary. Still, we promise that the combination of a soundly researched carbon footprint and an action plan will become a backbone of your business prosperity. For example, we’ve seen carbon footprinting lead to financial value in the form of carbon offset opportunities. Take the case in Alberta, where some oil and gas producers have effectively monetized reducing their carbon footprints. These oil and gas producers can now earn carbon credits by swapping out their high-vent pneumatics equipment to reduce the amount of methane vented from their operations!
At Radicle, we like to find a sustainability diamond in the rough. How? Let’s be honest — establishing a company’s carbon footprint is half the battle. The other battle comes from wrapping your mind around something you’ve never done before. It’s how you’ll feel in the first year of implementing a sustainability strategy. Then, it gets easier the more you do it, just like any new way of doing things.
Ready to use carbon footprinting to launch your sustainability initiative? We’re waiting with our streamlined approach and Canada’s leading experts on carbon footprinting, measurement, and management. Let’s make your sustainability story a fun one to tell.