How Do We Measure our Carbon Footprint?
When we started Project Hive Pet Company, we knew we wanted to help save the bees. (You can read more about our mission here and what we’ve been doing about it here (and in Canada, here). But we are more than just a give-back company. We are B Corp Certified and just released our second annual Impact Report.
We want to grow our business and save more bees without causing more harm to our environment. Yet the reality is that our economic infrastructure has developed and grown based on burning cheap and abundant fossil fuels. So, in growing our company, we must address one of the most important threats to our future: climate change. One of our goals is to become climate-neutral.
What is Climate Neutrality?
Climate neutrality is the effort by individuals, businesses, and organizations—anyone who uses energy or somehow emits greenhouse gases—to reduce those emissions to zero to prevent irreversible damage to our planet and its ability to support healthy people, plants, and animals.
Think about everything that requires energy: manufacturing plants, cars, trucks, airplanes, heating, cooling, appliances, lights, refrigeration, etc. Most of that energy is produced by burning fossil fuels: oil, gas, and coal. Burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists have determined affect our climate. The primary greenhouse gas emissions include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which trap heat and make the planet warmer. So, we start by focusing on energy usage, as that's the primary cause.
In setting a goal of carbon neutrality, we are not alone. We see the headlines: the State of Minnesota will be climate-neutral by 2040. United Airlines pledges climate neutrality by 2050.
Most small businesses don’t have the resources to hire consultants to do this work, so how does Project Hive Pet Company do it? In order to address your own organization’s impact, you have to measure first. That means conducting a carbon footprint analysis. As a LEED Accredited Professional and GRI-trained corporate sustainability report writer, I’ve performed many carbon footprint analyses in my career.
Below, I provide a “Carbon Footprint Analysis 101” and then discuss Project Hive’s carbon footprint calculations. We published the results in our second annual Impact Report; more details about are carbon footprint are provided here.
Carbon Footprint Analysis 101
Many online calculators exist. They typically ask how you commute to work, what you eat, how much you travel by airplane, the size of your home, where you live, and how your home is heated and cooled. Then out pops a total of “metric tons of CO2e”. Then, you may feel guilty or powerless. So, there’s a button to click to buy these carbon offsets, and presto! You’ve done your part! Do I sound cynical? I am—you need to do the work yourself, or you won’t have any clue how and where to start and how to prioritize your time and money.
How do you conduct a carbon footprint analysis?
The first thing to know about a carbon footprint is that the result will be one number in terms of “CO2 metric ton equivalents” or “CO2 mte.” Many greenhouse gases contribute to climate change: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, fluorocarbons, etc. Each has a different “global warming potential,” meaning how much it will affect the climate and how long it will stick around in the atmosphere. Scientists typically use the 100-year global warming equivalency calculator, which I would argue is incorrect, because we do not have 100 years to fix the problem. So, even the underlying scientific assumptions can be incorrect.
This leads to the second concept: the number will not be accurate. (It may be precise, but precision does not equal accuracy.) The number of variables and assumptions behind those variables make it so you can never be 100% accurate. So you have to give it your best shot and be consistent over time.
Scope 1, 2, and 3 Emissions
What are Scope One Emissions?
The best way to understand scope one emissions is to think about what your business owns or controls and whether and where the business burns any oil, gas, or coal onsite. Many companies own their buildings and use natural gas to heat the building (and possibly heat water). How much they use is easy to find on the gas bill, typically in the unit of therms or BTUs. Those units are easily transcribed into metric ton equivalents of greenhouse gas emissions using the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies calculator. (Again, this calculator may not be entirely accurate, but it will be consistent.) If your business owns a building, manufacturing plant, or fleet of vehicles, you will have gas bills. Take the total gas consumed over the period of time you are measuring and plug that into the calculator.
What are Scope Two Emissions?
Scope Two emissions refers to electricity purchases for a business’s own use. The units of electricity come in kilowatt-hours, so you have to look at your electric bills on any facilities you own and add up all the kilowatt hours. Then, plug that into the calculator, and you’ll get your emissions number.
What are Scope Three Emissions?
Scope 3 emissions are all the other upstream and downstream activities a company impacts but does not directly control. Examples include:
- Purchased goods and services. For a manufacturing company, this would include the energy it takes to make the inputs the company buys to make its products.
- Upstream and downstream distribution of goods. This would consist of the energy it takes to freight materials to the manufacturer, then to a warehouse or distribution center, and then to retail stores or homes—wherever the product’s final destination.
- Business travel. This can be minimized through decisions to conduct virtual meetings; most major airlines offer carbon offsets upon purchase of booking.
- Employee commuting. A business does have influence over this:
- allowing employees to work from home
- providing free public transportation passes
- offering bicycle storage and showers
- providing prime parking spaces for carpooling and electric vehicles.
- Waste disposal. A company’s trash can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions if it decomposes in a landfill or is incinerated.
Here's where it gets pretty squishy. Where do businesses draw the box around their emissions? And once that is decided, how do they get the data? This can be the most difficult component of a carbon footprint analysis since many suppliers don’t track their own energy consumption, much less emissions data. If you have a shipped product, for example, it’s almost impossible to track what type of vehicle was used and the amount of fuel burned to ship only your product—particularly for small businesses, who rarely have truckloads of products they can attribute entirely to their own operations. The important part, though, is measuring the relative significance of each of the components of Scope 3 emissions so businesses can decide where to prioritize their time—decisions that will also be determined based on where a company can realistically have some influence.
How Does Project Hive Calculate its Emissions?
Project Hive Scope 1 Emissions
Since Project Hive Pet Company does not own any facilities, we can only look at where we work. We are headquartered out of our house, and we estimate that about 20% of our square footage is used for business purposes. If our heat were powered by natural gas, we’d take 20% of our gas bill usage, and that would be our Scope 1 emissions. Since our house is heated and cooled using a ground source heat pump, we do not burn any fossil fuels onsite for our business. So, our scope 1 emissions = 0.
Project Hive Scope 2 Emissions
We use electricity for heat, cooling, lighting, and plugging in our computers and phones. We can easily calculate Scope 2 emissions by adding up our kilowatt-hour usage from our electric bills, taking 20% of the total, plugging that number into the calculator, and coming up with a number. However, we subscribe to Xcel Energy’s Windsource program, meaning we get electricity from 100% wind energy. Therefore, Project Hive’s Scope 2 emissions = 0. We also produce additional clean energy through solar panels on the roof, so we are net positive regarding Scope 1 & 2 emissions.
Many companies only look at Scope 1 & 2 emissions for their footprint—and rightly so, since that’s all they can control. And in that sense, Project Hive has met its goal of climate neutrality.
Project Hive Scope 3 Emissions
Since we make dog toys and treats, we draw the box around Scope 3 emissions by calculating emissions from purchased goods, distribution, and business travel. Here’s the math—and remember, it’s all an estimate.
Adding that all up, our Scope 3 emissions total about 29 CO2 mte, equivalent to about 6 homes’ energy use for one year. These are the emissions we can try to influence and potentially purchase carbon offsets.
What is Emission Avoidance?
Emission avoidance is the emissions a company does not produce due to operational decisions that are different from conventional alternatives. For example, Project Hive Pet Company makes its toys in the United States, whereas most dog toys are made in Asia. So, we calculate "emission avoidance" by taking the total pounds of dog toys we produced in a year and multiplying that by the weight of each toy to get to the total metric tons of toys that did not have to be shipped across the Pacific Ocean. According to an article on Intek Freight & Logistics, Inc.’s website, container ships emit 10 to 40 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Using an average of 25 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer traveled, and China is about 10,000 kilometers away, we calculate that we avoided 5.9 CO2 mte from manufacturing our dog toys in the United States.
We also like to calculate our impact on carbon emissions avoidance by making vegetarian dog treats compared to mainstream dog treats, which typically use animal products. According to 8billiontrees.com, "emissions from plant-based foods are anywhere from 10 to 50 times lower than most meats." Assuming 25% of our product by weight could have been meat, we estimate we saved 317 CO2 mte compared to beef and 20 CO2 mte compared to chicken—in addition to saving millions of gallons of water.
The Bottom Line
While no company or human is ever truly sustainable, it’s essential to understand the impact of our decisions on the health of people and the planet. By understanding more about our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, we can prioritize our resources to further decrease our carbon footprint.
