Page 108 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

GREEN FROM THE INSIDE OUT 87

or practices, from purchasing recycled paper to green cleaning to choosing new part-
ners or vendors, helps ensure a thorough understanding of the rationale, and provides
a broader spectrum of ideas and support. Consistent communication and interaction
fosters a sense of sustainability into all facets of the organization. Having a values-
centric organization and a set of cultural practices built around those values—issues
discussed in the prior two chapters—are critical foundation stones that support an
ethos of consistent communication and staff-wide interaction.

How Sustainable Are We?

The decision has been made to push an organization in a direction that embodies sus-
tainability as a core component. Support is company wide, from the C-level positions
(CEO, COO, CFO) down to the front line workers. There might even be someone
specifically tasked with overseeing these initiatives and armed with a budget to boot.
How do you measure success?
A primary hindrance in the drive toward corporate sustainability is the lack of
clearly defined metrics. Financial metrics are fairly standard for most industries. You
can measure success based on rate of return, return on equity, gross sales, or increase
in profits. But how do you measure the sustainability of an organization’s day-to-day
business operations?
The most common metric organizations consider is the company’s carbon footprint.
A carbon footprint refers to the amount of carbon dioxide (and its equivalents, as
explained below) generated through business operations. (The term “environmental
footprint” is often used as well, though an environmental footprint may be more inclu-
sive than activities that result in carbon emissions, such as procurement and recycling.)
While not by any means a complete snapshot of an organization’s environmental
impact, a carbon footprint gives a company a starting point for analyzing energy con-
sumption, travel, water use, and waste. Methods of determining your carbon footprint
vary widely by industry.

DETERMINING YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT
Measuring your company’s carbon footprint (and reducing your contribution to climate
change and global warming, a large-scale environmental threat) starts with greenhouse
gases. The World Resources Institute defines global climate change as “the desta-
bilization of the earth’s climate system caused by an increase in the concentration of
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greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere.” In a nutshell, our atmosphere contains
a variety of heat-trapping gases called greenhouse gases, so named because they blan-
ket the earth, functioning in a similar fashion to a farmer’s greenhouse or a car sitting
in the sun. In both cases, the glass lets light pass through, but traps the heat energy.
This results in temperatures within the greenhouse or car being significantly warmer
than temperatures outside. These greenhouse gases form a blanket around the planet
that works like the glass of the greenhouse or the car, keeping Earth’s surface about