Verteego Calculates its Carbon Footprint
May 4, 2009 – 6:50 am by Keenan
Using Verteego Carbon, our online carbon management software, Verteego has calculated its carbon footprint. We are proud to report that Verteego was responsible for emissions of just 3.153 tons of carbon equivalents in 2008.
Sustainability and reducing our impact is in our blood here at Verteego, and the results of our carbon assessment were low, as expected. Highlights of our report include:
1) Extremely low home-work travel emissions of 208 kg carbon equivalent due to the fact that all employees take the subway to work.
2) Very low emissions from electricity consumed on-site (544 kg carbon equivalent) due to minimal use of heating and lighting.
3) Exceptionally low emissions from business travel by car (47 kg carbon equivalent) due to the use of lower-emission options, such as rail travel.
Because we are conscious of our impact in the VerteegOffice, we have picked all the low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing our impact. We are very conscious of making use of natural light, minimizing heating, reducing the waste we generate, and choosing low-impact transportation. Nevertheless, calculating our carbon footprint with Verteego Carbon has helped us identify some areas where we can reduce our impact further.
For instance, depreciation of the office, hardware, and furniture accounted for over 60% of our total footprint, and business travel by air accounted for over 80% of our total business travel emissions. It is clear that these are areas where we should focus our reduction efforts in the coming year.
Actions we are looking into for 2009 include better insulating the windows of our office to reduce heating needs, extending the life of our electronics to decrease amortized emissions from depreciation, using more tele- and video-conferencing to reduce business travel, and replacing air travel with train travel, which will save both emissions and costs.
To learn more about Verteego’s carbon management software and carbon consulting options, visit us at Verteego Carbon.
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We are indeed rather proud of our low footprint but still, we’ll try and reduce our carbon emissions / headcount ratio in 2009 by 6% (twice what the Kyoto protocol advocates for).
Keenan, don’t you think we should probably communicate our carbon footprint in CO2 rather than just in C? It would make the figure higher and hence have a more significant impact on people’s minds.
What do you think?
Comment by Jeremy — May 4, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
I think you are right to point out that reporting our footprint in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents rather than carbon equivalents is a little more transparent or even “honest” as the figure is higher.
Verteego’s overall emissions for 2008 were 11,560 kg CO2e. To convert any other figures from carbon equivalents to CO2e, simply multiply by 44/12.
With a 6% reduction, our goal for 2009 will be to reduce our emissions by at least 694 kg CO2e.
Comment by Keenan — May 4, 2009 @ 1:52 pm
…per capita
Since if we grow by a three-digit figure as it seems, we will simply not be able to comply with this goal which would lose its rationale anyways.
Comment by Jeremy — May 4, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
I am not a carbon emissions expert but I recently reserved an air round trip from San Diego to San Francisco and the the total carbon emissions as computed by the travel agency website (they are in on this as well and want to make us feel guilty despite it being against their revenue/goals) was 450 lbs of CO2.
And based on Verteego’s carbon output for ‘transport of persons’ it is 500 kg and that means it is essentially 2 round trips from SD to SF. I find that incredulous if there is no travel involved in a software selling/consulting type business. Either the travel agency computation is way off or your ‘transport reporting’ is way off
Comment by Prabhakar — June 19, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
Prabhakar,
The reason our travel emissions were so low in 2008 is due to the fact that we did not have any air travel. All of our employees take public transportation to work, which, thanks to the fact that France uses mostly nuclear energy, has an extremely low carbon footprint.
The most polluting part of our business travel was the occasional taxi to or from the train station when on sales trips.
Thanks for analyzing our footprint so closely! Let us know if you see any other questionable figures!
Comment by Keenan — July 1, 2009 @ 11:08 am
I actually went to Sweden, but it happened once
Comment by Jeremy — July 27, 2009 @ 2:36 pm