We Help Corporations

Zerofootprint Corporations

Zerofootprint offers corporations two complimentary products: the Enterprise Carbon Management application and the Employee Carbon Manager application. See below for details.

Enterprise Carbon Management application

Carbon presents a new and fundamental challenge to business. Suddenly, we have a commodity that every organisation must account for. It is a cost and a risk. For many companies, it also offers opportunity.

But carbon is not like a raw material, or like interest rates where the cost or the risk is easy to identify and quantify. Carbon is everywhere. It is in the supply chain, in processing and manufacturing, in offices and call centres, in employee work habits and executive travel, and in the packaging and final disposal of products. Carbon spans the balance sheet. As we move towards an era of carbon regulation and taxes, it is clearly a liability. But as the world drives towards a low-carbon economy, there are also many opportunities. Managed in the right way, for some, carbon can become an asset.

This ubiquity of carbon in all that a modern organisation does, and the fact that it impacts companies in positive and negative ways, means that it requires a holistic enterprise-wide response. Carbon must be measured, monitored and managed across the board. It must be tackled top down and bottom up. In short, it requires Enterprise Carbon Management.

Enterprise Carbon Management (ECM) is Zerofootprint’s proprietary method for helping a company measure, monitor, and reduce its carbon emissions. It’s an end-to-end, customizable solution that allows you to measure and track your company’s environmental impact, and leverage this for competitive advantage.

All of Zerofootprint’s greenhouse gas measurements are done according to international standards. Greenhouse gas inventories are performed according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, an international emissions accounting standard.

To learn more about ECM, please contact ecm@zerofootprint.net

And read our publications: Enterprise Carbon Management and Carbon Value at Risk

Employee Carbon Manager application

The Zerofootprint’s Employee Carbon Manager is an online application that engages your employees in carbon reduction and other environmental initiatives. The web-based calculator and social networking application enables employees to measure and manage their carbon footprint, and to collaborate with colleagues to achieve environmental goals.

The Zerofootprint Employee Carbon Manager will aggregate employee carbon reductions, which you can attribute back to the company, and publish and celebrate them. Data collected through the calculator can feed into other environmental initiatives, and the calculator can be used to enhance current corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. It will support competitions between individuals, departments or offices to achieve carbon or other environmental targets. Furthermore, as employees become more environmentally conscious, they often start to reduce and conserve carbon and other resources, and this can lead to bottom line savings.

The Zerofootprint Employee Carbon Manager can be customized for your company, and is co-branded and linked to your website. The calculator is available in a number of different languages, and can use any country-specific units of measurement or emissions datasets, making it ideal for multinational corporations. The application also links to a marketplace of green products and services, as well as events and news. Finally, we also offer the option to measure ecological footprint and water footprint.

Corporations, especially large multinationals or many corporations acting together, are like countries without borders, and the aggregated actions of their employees can make a significant contribution to a greener world. Knowing they are part of a larger effort gives employees a sense of empowerment to bring about positive change.

Zerofootprint Employee Carbon Manager features

• Employees can each create a footprint profile and their own custom calculator and calculate their own carbon footprint and track it through time.
• Employees can see their footprint relative to others.
• Your company can link the “Tips” in the calculator to other current environmental initiatives.
• Your company and/or employees can set footprint reduction goals.
• Employees can see the impact of achieving goals on their footprint.
• Employees can pledge and commit to taking certain actions to meet goals.
• Employees can see and link to others who are also using the calculator, and create or join groups around goals.
• Employees can also use Zerofootprint’s One Minute Calculator for a quick measure of their footprint.
• The application links to a marketplace of green products and services, events and news

Zerofootprint Employee Carbon Manager customization

• The Calculator can be co-branded with your company’s logo on each page.
• You can include a message to your employees on the landing page of the Calculator.
• The Calculator can include links to existing corporate environmental initiatives or content in the “Tips” section.
• You can link the Calculator to your company’s website.
• You select the Calculator’s categories, questions and tips from a database of options.
• The “Community” section of the Calculator can include three levels of your company’s hierarchy – for example: My Office, My Department, My Team.
• The Calculator’s database will be programmed with the appropriate emissions factors for your different offices.
• You can create custom reports to meet your organization’s needs or integrate with your current reporting structure.

Case Study of an Employee Carbon Manager at a financial services company:

Implementation:

• You establish a small working group – Team Zero – to implement the Calculator.
• Team Zero works with Zerofootprint to customize the tool, including reviewing all the questions, tips, carbon emissions factors and other content to ensure they are relevant to your organization.
• Zerofootprint develops a prototype based on your requirements and the content you provide.
• Team Zero reviews the prototype.
• Zerofootprint consolidates the feedback, and makes the necessary changes.
• Zerofootprint helps Team Zero to identify opportunities to market the tool throughout your company.
• The Calculator is rolled out across the organization.
• The Calculator collects and aggregates data, and monitors progress.
• Zerofootprint provides reports detailing and summarizing employee responses to all the questions and employee goals.

Marketing and Communications:

Critical to the success of the Calculator is the motivation and engagement of employees. As with any social networking tool, active use of the Carbon Manager encourages others to participate. Here are some ways that are being explored by a financial services company to encourage employees to actively participate.

• Implement challenges – Use inter-department or inter-office challenges and competitions to motivate people.
• Use giveaways – Generate interest and excitement by giving away environmentally friendly products and services linked to use of the Calculator.
• Demonstrate senior management buy-in – Before the official launch of the Calculator, make sure that senior management and key staff calculate their carbon footprints.
• Make it fun and make it valuable – Before the launch, create relevant and interesting groups within the Calculator, and add useful content so that it is enjoyable for users to explore the tool and to interact with others.
• Make it count – Consider incorporating the use of the Calculator into your organizational performance appraisal system.
• Capture and respond to feedback – Once staff start using the tool, they are likely to become aware of many opportunities to reduce carbon or take other environmental initiatives within your organization. Make sure you have the systems in place to capture and respond to this feedback.
• Advertise effectively – Use all the means at your disposal to promote the Calculator, including your intranet, in-house bulletins, events, notices, etc.

Extend the Zerofootprint Employee Calculator through your partners and your supply chain Your company may also wish extend its influence and roll out the Zerofootprint Employee Carbon Calculator to your partners’ and suppliers’ employees, thereby having an even greater positive impact on the environment. The application will enable you to aggregate the entire reduction in footprint of this community, publish and celebrate it.