Environmental Sustainability, Counting What Matters

In a commercial for the Certified General Accountants of Canada, one of the accountants asks the camera, “Do I believe the environment deserves a balance sheet?”, to which he replies, “Yes, I do.” How does this statement impact small business owners? Do we have a responsibility to try and assist in improving that balance sheet? And if we do, how do we know we're being successful?

One of the most important tools that small business owners can use to determine just how successful they are in obtaining good results for the environment, and their businesses, is an analysis of their carbon footprint. But just how do you go about measuring your business' impact on the planet? Today, I entered my fourth year of data with Carbon Counted, an online reporting tool developed by Steve Cox and Andrew Conway of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

I've never met Steve, having always done business over the phone and email, but as Steve likes to tell it, he's an engineer that wanted to help businesses track their impact on the environment by providing a platform that linked business owners with environmental consulting firms. I became involved with Carbon Counted through the efforts of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers when Steve and Andrew's firm was chosen as the service provider for the association's Environmental Sustainability Initiative.

The problem with the way that business has traditionally approached efficiency is that we often look at our P&L statements as a indication of how well, or how poorly we are handling energy efficiency in our operations. Many business owners I've spoken with have undertaken energy efficiency projects of one degree or another and simply looked at the bottom line of their utility bill to determine whether any savings occurred. Of course, the problem with this methodology is the fact that we have been seeing, and will continue to see increases in the unit cost of energy.

What a detailed carbon footprint analysis will do for your business is help you understand exactly how you are using energy in your business, set benchmarks for typical consumption, and allow you to develop plans on how you will lower your energy use in the months and years ahead. If you have access to industry averages, you can also determine how efficient, or inefficient your operation is in comparison with your typical competitor. No doubt, very valuable information.

What's great about programs such as Steve and Andrew's is that they are so simple to use. Once you've registered your business along with it's particulars you simply have to take your units of consumption from your utility bills, and the quantity of refrigerants used by contractors to recharge leaks in your systems, and enter them on the website. From that data you should receive a report that will show you where your CO2 emissions are coming from, and over time how they are changing as you make changes to your operations.

So back to that accountant's question. Does the environment deserve a balance sheet? If you're not considering the impact your business is having on the environment, the planet's balance sheet likely won't be the only one to suffer.