The Carbon Footprint: The Core of a Sustainable Business Strategy
🎬 Interview with Philippe Mangard, Executive Director of the Global Climate Initiatives platform
Could you please introduce yourself and describe GCI's business?
Hello, my name isPhilippe Mangeard.
Ten years ago, along with a number of like-minded friends, we launchedthe Global Climate Initiatives platform, which today enables any business or local government—whether small, medium, or large—in France or abroad to accurately identify and calculate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its operations and, as a result, prepare a comprehensive and compliant carbon footprint report.
How can a carbon strategy create value?
A carbon strategy can create economic value in several areas.
First: the savings that a carbon footprint assessment will identify. It will identify waste, inefficient use of resources, and unnecessary travel. Second, it is the best response to market demand.
Today, there isn’t a single local government, nor is there a single large company that asks its service provider to commit to this low-carbon initiative—which, of course, begins with the preparation of its carbon footprint assessment—and beyond that, the very sustainability of these companies is at stake; it’s hard to imagine today that our new employees would want to work for a company that fails to recognize or acknowledge the climate emergency and the importance— I would say the duty—of everyone to get involved inreducing greenhouse gas emissions.
How cost-effective is carbon accounting?
It is also important to understandthat a carbon assessment is always cost-effective.
A carbon footprint assessment: initial benefits include reduced waste, reduced misuse, and fewer trips and unnecessary transportation—savings of several thousand euros or even tens of thousands of euros that this assessment will identify. I’d like to remind you that this assessment costs a few hundred euros onthe Global Climate Initiatives platform.
So, first and foremost, there’s what’s known as ROI. But beyond that, carbon footprint analysis will enable companies to rethink how they organize their workflows and supply chains and, more broadly, to better compete against rivals and competitors through innovation—a key to ensuring the long-term sustainability of business growth.
Who in the company should develop the carbon strategy?
A carbon footprint assessment is an accounting exercise. Like any accounting exercise, it should lead to forecasts and action plans—in other words, to the implementation of a strategy aimed at reducing one’s carbon footprint.
This will be decided collectively by all the people in the company who have worked together to draft this carbon footprint assessment. The carbon footprint assessment can serve as the starting point for a new organizational structure for the company—one decided upon collectively and given a nice-sounding name: low-carbon strategy.
It’s also important to understand that you can’t reduce your carbon footprint on your own within the company—you have to involve your ecosystem. Based on their carbon assessments, everyone will have realized that 50 to 70, 80 percent of their carbon footprint depends on their suppliers.
It is therefore important to start asking them to calculate their own carbon footprint so that, along with the price and delivery times for their products or services, they can provide you with the associated carbon footprint —keeping in mind that carbon footprints can vary by a factor of 1 to 10 from one supplier to another.
I think that in a perfect world—the one that awaits us in two or three years—purchasing departments will choose suppliers based on product quality, price, delivery time, and carbon footprint.
Therefore, any entrepreneur who wants to retain their customers and stand out from the competition mustcommit to calculating their carbon footprint, determining what is known as the emissions factor per unit of work, products, or services, and—to improve their own carbon performance—must require, and I mean require—at the very least, its most important suppliers to, in turn, provide their carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of the products and services it purchases from them.