Picture yourself on a typical winter morning in your cozy home office.
You sip from a cup of steaming, ethically-sourced hot cocoa while wrapped in an organic cotton blanket from the local market.
As you join your first video call of the day, you crack open the window to balance out the warmth radiating from your electric heater. You catch up with your boss, who just flew back home after a great visit to the office in your city. You’re both happy to bask in the comfort of working from home on such a cold day.
As cozy as it seems, do you see the mismatch between your eco-friendly lifestyle and the actions you take as part of your regular workday?
If it makes you uncomfortable - you’re not alone.
Employees demand stronger action on environmental causes
In a Reuters survey of 2,000 UK office workers, 72% of employees reported their concerns for the environment, while 83% felt their employers were not taking enough action to address the cause.
In the era of the Great Resignation, the workforce cares deeply about working for a company that reflects their own personal ethics. And the environment is a key growing concern, especially for millennials and Gen Z employees.
However, it’s not just employees that seek better environmental accountability. Policymakers around the world face mounting pressure to take action on climate change - and business leaders are no exception.
Companies are responding to the urgency behind carbon accountability
There are no two ways about it: employees, investors, and customers increasingly prefer to be associated with environmentally conscious companies. And with good reason:
Climate change affects every living being on earth and more so the disadvantaged segments of the population. With global temperatures predicted to increase by 1.5 Celsius over the next two decades, the effects are already being felt with massive loss of biodiversity, poor air quality, and devastating food and water shortages.
From supplier choices to the impact of data storage for each recorded video call, businesses are no less contributing to climate change as more obvious players. But not all is lost:
Several countries, including New Zealand, Switzerland, France, and the UK, have introduced mandatory climate impact reporting in industries such as the banking sector.
Companies are quickly realizing the competitive edge gained from green initiatives. Increasingly, companies win deals against their competitors with the added advantage of carbon conscious initiatives.
The private sector is catching up, with more than 5,000 businesses and financial institutions pledging to hit net-zero carbon by 2050. This is leading to a virtuous cycle driven by leaders driving smaller players to keep pace with carbon accounting initiatives.
Making pledges is the first step, but following through on promises can only be tracked and verified through highly accurate carbon measurement. It can be a complicated affair for corporations to measure their data accurately, more so when owning multiple companies or parts of companies.
And that’s why business leaders are looking to technology for next-gen carbon footprint accountability.
How you can transform your company’s carbon footprint roadmap
Let’s revisit our imaginary winter work-from-home scenario: imagine sipping your ethical hot cocoa while analyzing your company’s carbon footprint in an aesthetic, comprehensive dashboard.
With just a couple of clicks, you see the end-to-end environmental impact of every decision your company makes, including energy consumption, commute, data storage, packaging, and promotional merchandise. What’s more, it all flows in seamlessly from multiple data sources and even includes projections of long-term impact.
It may seem futuristic, but this scenario becomes reality with carbon accounting software. Here’s a glimpse into how you can transform your company’s carbon footprint with Pigment’s carbon accounting program:
- Identify cost savings that help the environment as well as the bottom line
- Share real-time impact reports driving faster and more confident leadership decisions
- Unite departments to collaborate and lead the conversation on carbon initiatives
- Cut data prep time by 80% and focus instead on impactful analysis
- Automate your data sources with tons of native integrations including Salesforce and Workday to prevent human error caused by manual data handling
- Forecast future returns on investing in carbon-neutral practices
Cheerz, the French instant photo printing company, cut its carbon footprint reporting prep time from two weeks to one day with Pigment, as part of our pilot carbon accounting program. The carbon-neutral company now tracks the carbon impact of each aspect of the business with monthly and yearly carbon footprint reports.
Leading by example: Pigment’s carbon footprint initiatives
We’re in the business of business planning here at Pigment, but we care equally about our impact on the environment. We’re solidifying plans to include carbon footprint training as part of our on-boarding efforts at Pigment.
Recently, we kicked off our awareness initiatives with The Climate Fresk, a macro-level event where employees gathered to brainstorm about the root causes of climate change.
As a result, we’ve resolved to complete our carbon footprint assessment to address the major sources of our environmental impact. We’re also planning future remote brainstorm sessions, as well as an event to assess the environmental impact of our IT operations.
One of our end goals is to build team-specific goals through personalized OKRs that measure each team’s impact through unique “green metrics”. These include measuring the carbon footprint by subcategories of purchases, commute time and methods, travel impact, data storage, and more. We’re also planning ways to radically reduce carbon impact from company swag and events through creative alternatives.
Last but not least, our specialists are developing measures to assess our remote workers’ carbon footprint, a factor that typically gets overlooked under corporate carbon footprint policies. This has led us to rethink how we account for at-home footprint, which involves the challenge of employee buy-in to measure and reduce carbon emissions.
As a company, we’re motivated by our team’s deep concern for the future of our planet. Each Pigment team member, from upper management to the engineering team plays an active role in researching, brainstorming, and collaborating on carbon footprint initiatives.
By building a dedicated platform for better carbon measurement, we want to enable ourselves as well as other companies to join together in the mission to save the earth.
Stay tuned to learn more about Pigment’s carbon accounting pilot program and how you can get involved.
Special thanks to Isaure de Zelicourt and Samya Barkaoui for their contributions to this article.
