 I recently completed Strategic Sustainability Consulting’s Green Audit certification program in Washington, D.C. and was very impressed with the President/Founder, Jennifer Woofter’s thoughtful and well-reasearched approach to conducting a green audit. Most impressive is the proprietary carbon calculator developed in collaboration with D.C. based think tank, Redefining Progress and San Francisco based, The Green Office. The quantitative analysis provides some hard facts on where the real savings in going green can be found.
Its true that reducing, reusing and recycling does have an overall impact to the environment as well as employee morale. It can definitely be a boost and draw folks closer together when a recycling program or “green” awareness campaign is started. However paper and waste generally is a small contributor to most office-based businesses overall carbon footprint.
The true opportunity for cost savings in this integrated methodology is looking at embedded carbon in a number of factors such as commuting, air travel and office infrastructure (these have some of highest embedded carbon). In many companies air travel is the number one contributor to its carbon footprint. Given the high cost of air travel, there are significant savings to be realized by developing an alternative to frequent travel such as video conferencing. Commuting is also a high contributing factor to many organizations carbon footprint and analysis via employee survey can provide hard data on determing if a telecommuting program would be a good approach for lessening your impact.
If you’ve been looking for the numbers approach to making the case for green, this audit provides both robust quantitative data and qualitative analysis to put a plan into action.
Specifically the audit includes the following five components:
- Employee survey
- Office/building survey
- Carbon footprint analysis
- Onsite visit by auditor
- Final green audit report
Plus results will be benchmarked against your peers so you can understand how you compare to other organizations going green.
If you’re interested in more detailed information please check out the link above. I am certified by SSC to conduct these green audits and would be happy to talk with you further.
If you’ve implemented your own cost saving initiatives I’d enjoy hearing about them.
Thanks,
Lisa Barnard |
