Carbon Footprint Reduction Options

Corporate sustainability goals have become a hallmark of companies that believe how they do business matters as much as their bottom line.  Conscientious consumers demand responsible business practices in exchange for their loyalty and businesses are paying attention.  A company’s impact on the environment in terms of its greenhouse gas emissions is a common factor businesses look to manage.  Using information from the United States General Services Administration we looked at two creative ways a business could reduce or offset its greenhouse gas emissions and found that simply switching one vehicle to natural gas could have the same impact on an organization’s carbon footprint with the added perk of reducing operating costs.

Plant a Small Forest
Many companies choose to offset their carbon footprint by planting trees.  After all, a single tree can absorb approximately 48 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.  At that rate, a company would need to plant enough trees to fill 11 football fields to equal the same greenhouse gas reduction of switching just one heavy-duty truck to Redeem renewable natural gas.  The average fleet size of the 100 largest private truck fleets is 1,275.  If one of these fleets were to convert to Redeem it would have the same greenhouse gas reduction as planting over 14,000 football fields worth of trees—roughly enough trees to stretch from Los Angeles, Calif. to Salem, Ore.

An Empty Office For One Year
If one employee did not come into the office and worked from home one day a week for one year, the company would reduce nearly one metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions.  In this scenario, a company would have to have an employee telecommute for an entire year to reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas achieved by switching just one delivery truck to compressed natural gas (CNG).  In fact, if the delivery truck was fueled with Redeem renewable natural gas that employee would have to work from home for over four years to achieve the same amount of greenhouse gas reduced by the delivery truck in just one year. How is your business or organization reducing its carbon footprint?  Leave a comment below or tweet a response with the hashtag #SmartSwap to keep the conversation going.