Our Environmental Impact

Sustainability at SBC | Our Company | Our Workplace | Our Environmental Impact |Our Social Impact

The traditional directive of business is to create profit for its shareholders. This way of business has resulted in an increasingly damaging effect on our society and environment. From the water and energy we consume to the garbage and greenhouse gases we create, nearly all of our actions impact the environment upon which we all depend. At Sustainable Business Consulting we realize the immediacy of the danger of environmental degradation and have set our sights on the long-term goal of preventing climate change which looms as a clear and present danger to our way of life. We also realize that increasing shareholder value and promoting stakeholder benefits are not mutually exclusive.

We are not alone in this fight as we are joined by some of the most intelligent and passionate individuals in the world. These leaders are joining forces to create change on a global level. For example, 2010 ended with the Copenhagen Climate Summit which held great promise in bringing the most powerful world leaders together to create a global agenda on climate change. Tragically, this conference failed to produce any meaningful resolutions to reduce the amount of carbon that mankind is emitting into the atmosphere. Despite this setback, we still believe that businesses can take initiative to make real change on their own. Here at SBC we have managed to grow our company, address climate change and implement carbon reduction strategies through market mechanisms and profitability motives that are inherent to businesses globally. 

Emissions Reporting & Carbon Offsets

SBC is proud to be one of the 19 founding members of the Climate Registry. We have reported our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to their public database every year since 2008. Reporting increases transparency in GHG reduction strategy and promotes awareness of climate change. In early 2010, SBC was one of the first nineteen members who received the Climate Registered Status, which demonstrates that we completed our GHG emissions inventories, received verification the findings and are approved by the Climate Registry. In June of 2010, SBC was honored at the Climate Registry’s North American Policy Forum for our efforts in taking the initiative to voluntarily measure and reduce emissions in a credible way.

SBC offsets all of our employees personal emissions and company emissions through a partnership with 3Degrees. We offer the offsetting of personal emissions as an employee benefit and we chose to purchase our 2010 offsets through the Tatanka wind farm, which is a project that not only increases renewable energy on the grid, but provides valuable economic development dollars on Native American tribal lands. 3Degrees uses the Green-e climate protocol to rigorously test and certify the reduction calculations and additionality of the project.  

While we are pleased with the contribution that we have made to the Tatanka wind farm, we are still focused on the unmet goal of becoming a net energy producer. We are limited in our generation potential by our current office location but will be looking to generate electricity as soon as we are in a space that will allow us to do so.

The methodology we used to determine our carbon footprint adheres to World Resources Institute’s best practices of using the most accurate data sources wherever possible. (See note below for information on our baseline.)

Emissions factors used to calculate carbon emissions and carbon equivalents are sourced from the EPA Climate Leaders Protocol, the US Department of Energy, the Environmental Defense Fund and The Climate Registry.  Our 2010 calculations include updates to emission factors from the Environmental Protection Agency’s eGRID, US Department of Transportation and US Greenhouse Gas Inventory.  Assumptions regarding waste production, intern commuting, energy usage and water consumption have been made as further described below.  

Business Travel

As our company grows, increases in business travel and their associated emissions will be a more prominent focus area of concern. We have increased travel-related emissions by 29 percent from our baseline with a 16 percent increase from 2009 alone. Notably, it was miles of air travel that increased the most from 2009 at 48 percent. Our miles traveled by train, car, and ferry (less carbon-intensive modes) actually decreased by 27 percent. This indicates that thinking more seriously about mode choices and client location could help us significantly reduce emissions.

We are already thinking critically about how to decrease our business travel for speaking engagements. We factor the distance of the engagement and weigh it against the publicity/business development opportunity. In some cases we have turned down very attractive invitations because they are too far away. However, we do still travel to many speaking engagements, so this will remain a challenge for us in the near term.

In another effort to decrease business travel this year, we tried to incorporate webinars more often into our business strategy. We have delayed investing in high-end videoconferencing technology at this time because we are unlikely to stay in this office long-term, but this is something we will definitely explore for our next office.

Commuting

Now we use the following commuting incentive schedule and employee commuting is accurately tracked on timesheets. Each employee’s method and miles traveled is converted into carbon emissions using our in-house carbon footprinting tool.  Commuting by interns was estimated based on number of days worked, average round trip miles and assumed 30% bus, 70% drive alone.

Within just one year under this system, SBC decreased the average per employee percentage of trips to work in a single occupancy vehicle by 35%. One of our employees reached the $750 incentive level, and another one missed it by just one trip! We are hoping this program will continue to be successful in pushing our employees to take alternative modes of transportation. 

 Emissions Estimations: Waste, Water & Electricity
It is always a challenge to fully report on our waste, water and electricity because we pay a set amount for our utilities rather than an amount based on our actual water and electricity usage and waste output. The property manager of our building cannot determine our office’s usage.  

Currently, to calculate our waste output, we measure the size of our waste container and multiply that by the number of times it is picked up to estimate how many pounds of waste we throw away.

For electricity, we use the method preferred by the Climate Registry for businesses in a situation such as ours. We multiply the square footage of our office by the energy intensity per square foot estimate provided by the EPA. This estimate is based on the EPA’s calculation of the average energy use of a business in an office setting.

The water consumption figure that we report reflects our drinking water only. To determine this figure, we contact our water delivery company and they tell us how many 5-gallon jugs we went through in the year. From this information we are able to calculate water usage. However, we do not calculate the emissions from our water use. Also, this number does not include our water usage associated with use of the building’s restrooms, which are shared with the whole floor of our office building.

We have tried to obtain sub-metered utility information, but have been unsuccessful in creating the systems necessary to create such data. We hope in the future to be able to better monitor and more accurately measure these aspects of our consumption and emissions.

Note on Baseline: This year we changed our reporting baseline from 2006 to 2007. In 2007, our business more closely resembled its current state than in 2006. Therefore, we can more meaningfully track our emissions and consumption relative to growth with a 2007 baseline. In 2007 we were in our current location for most of the year, whereas in 2006 our office was based out of a home half the year and in an office space downtown the other half. Also, our client and employee bases were more similar to their current size in 2007 than in 2006. This is the recommended course of action from the World Resources Institute, because it provides a more representative emissions profile. We also used a 2009 baseline for some of our environmental goals because we implemented new incentives and tracking systems in 2009.