Carbon Offsets: A New Way of Improving Your Green Footprint
By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner 4/1/2008 As noted in a recent article in PC Magazine, frequent air travelers have been invited to reduce their personal carbon footprints by purchasing carbon offsets: investments in projects designed to be carbon footprint positive (like planting new trees). I confess that even though I fly frequently, I never heard of these initiatives before, nor have I ever participated. Upon further investigation, they do exist, and just like all legitimate goodwill initiatives, there are not-so-scrupulous people taking advantage of goodwill hunters, and taking their money for no good reason. So all you frequent fliers with conscience – be aware and beware! Further, PC Magazine pointed me to a really interesting web site that’s worth noting: http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_business.php. The business section of this web site contains case studies of some leading businesses and their green initiatives. Yes, retailers ARE among them. Notables you’d expect like Timberland, and others that might not come to top of mind, like Shaw’s Supermarket, Stop and Shop, and Kinko’s have multiple case studies on the site – including efforts to improve energy efficiency, create Green buildings, and engage employees, customers or suppliers in climate action. The non-profit organization also published a compendium called “A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers.” This piece has a slightly different purpose. Its goal is to identify reputable carbon-offset retailers (yikes! A new retailing segment emerges) …and help consumers find ways to make their own LIVES more carbon friendly, beyond buying those squiggly fluorescent light bulbs. One word of caution (and a sidebar), which I assume most of our readers already know: domain name suffixes (or Top Level Domains – TLDs) are important. Typing dot-com after cleanair-coolplanet instead of dot-org takes you to a web site that offers some suggestions on clean air but also directs the reader to a Jewish dating service. The site itself is clever. I was actually confused for a few minutes (although I was befuddled about the relationship between clean air and dating my fellow Hebrews). I had to check back to the original article to get the link right. The take-away? If you’ve got the dot-com registered, you might also want to grab the dot-net and the dot-biz TLDs. Now, back to the story of the day….as most of you know, RSR has been surveying retailers for the past month to understand your green initiatives. Our “Green” survey respondents indicate their primary goal in pursuing Green initiatives is cost containment: the price of oil is out of control, packaging costs are through the roof, energy consumption costs at stores are out of control. All this is true. But these same retailers also recognize a core point: The consumer really DOES care about global warming. Fully 71 percent identified consumer pressure to go green as a key business driver. So while 41% of retailers have spent less than $1,000,000 to date on green initiatives and ruminate over the costs of going green going forward, the customer is watching. We at RSR are racing to gain a deeper understanding of what it really means for retailers to “go green.” We’re waiting to see Staples first “carbon neutral” store open in Miami, even as we wonder if just the store, or the contents too are carbon neutral. We’ve gathered data from a lot of you for our upcoming Green Retailing benchmark report. Through a combination of luck and a great suggestion from our Director of Business Development, Ana Weinand, we’re releasing that benchmark on Earth Day 2008. You still have time to take the survey and we’d appreciate your input. If you want to participate, please click here.
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