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10 10 P P a r t I : a r t I : T r e n d s a n d R e a s o n s t o G o G r e e nr e n d s a n d R e a s o n s t o G o G r e e n

When computing your company’s carbon footprint, you need to decide how complete
and honest you want to be. Measuring your carbon footprint necessitates gathering a lot of
information. Let’s consider your carbon footprint as it relates to greenhouse gases. You need
to track such areas as
• Facilities
• Operations
• Transportation
• Travel
• Purchases

NOTE “Purchases” means everything from raw materials to office supplies.

You also have to draw some boundaries in your measurements. That is, how far upstream
and downstream will your organization measure? For example, when you buy new servers
for your datacenter, are you responsible for the greenhouse gases generated to have them
delivered, or is that the manufacturer’s statistic?
Think about the issue downstream. Is your company or your customers responsible for
climatic impacts of the use and disposal of your products? You also need to ensure that all
this information is collected consistently so it can be put into reports for different
departments, facilities, locations, and so forth.
Although this seems like a lot of work (and it is), it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Fortunately, there is a fairly standard way organizations are measuring their greenhouse gas
emissions.

Measuring
Measurement is not a five-minute project. It will take time and expertise. You’ll likely want
to call in someone who specializes in this work, simply because you’ll get better results, it’ll
free you to do your own work, and you’ll be less likely to goof it up.
Four major steps are used to measure your carbon footprint:

• Define what is included in your carbon footprint.
• Set your baseline.
• Track, calculate, and analyze your footprint.
• Report your results to stakeholders.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s involved in these steps.
Define Your Borders
You first need to define what you are going to be measuring. You can be as liberal with this
as you like, but realize that the more you decide to include in your measurement, the more
difficult it will be. Realize, also, that while tracking less data is certainly easier, you don’t get
an accurate accounting.
In your calculations, you might consider both upstream and downstream events.
Consider Figure 1-2.