Going from Aspiration to Application: Journey to Net Zero
Julie Lary
Turn prospects into delighted, loyal customers as a creative marketing professional and storyteller with success creating campaigns for Microsoft, Dell, Fluke, and other Fortune 500s
Recently, I supported a company that assessed the environmental and social impact of goods used in interior design from raw materials through reuse or disposal. Their customers were eager to invest in products that lowered their carbon footprint with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
These companies, however, were a small subset of the total target audience. Most recognized the need to become more environmentally and socially responsible, taking steps to reduce waste and invest in products made from renewable resources, such as cotton linens and bamboo flooring. Few, however, had wholeheartedly embraced examining – from top to bottom – their operations to pinpoint ways to minimize their greenhouse gas emissions.
Lack of clarity
From the get-go, there’s a plethora of words being bandied and interchanged without a clear understanding of their meaning and how to go about making changes besides the obvious of saving energy, encouraging carpooling and the use of public transportation, and recycling.
According to the New Climate Institute, “Most companies’ climate strategies are mired by ambiguous commitments, offsetting plans that lack credibility and emission scope exclusions, but replicable good practice can be identified from a minority.”
For decades, businesses and consumers have understood the basics of saving energy. Cutting emissions – greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet like a “greenhouse” – requires an understanding of indirect emissions, known as scope 3. For most companies, scope 3 emissions account for 90% of their greenhouse gas emission footprint.[1]
The hardest to measure and reduce, scope 3 emissions originate from sources that are indirectly owned or controlled by an organization, such as supply chain, transportation, product usage, and disposal. Translated, it’s the ”stuff” you buy, use, and ultimately discard.
In concert with scope 3 emissions is the need to become more sustainable by limiting consumption of certain resources, ensuring there’s enough left for future generations.
Journey of a T-shirt
Think about the lifecycle of a cotton t-shirt. The cotton is grown, perhaps without the use of chemicals. Emissions are produced when the cotton is harvested and cleaned. The raw cotton is then bundled and shipped to a fabric manufacturer, maybe initially by truck. Bolts of fabric are loaded into a cargo ship, and finally transported by train to a clothing manufacturer.
After being cut and sewn, hundreds of t-shirts are boxed and shipped to an air-conditioned warehouse. A month passes before they’re sent by train to a retailer’s distribution center, where they’re parsed into dozens of trucks, destined for retail sales floors.
The consumer who purchases a t-shirt wears it for a few seasons and then throws it away, after it’s been laundered dozens of times. Or maybe they give the shirt to Value Village, where it’s bundled with other damaged clothes, and shipped back to the same location where the cotton was originally grown and harvested.
Every iteration entails resources and has an environmental or social component. The cumulative impact – raw materials; chemicals, dyes, and fertilizers; transportation; manufacturing; packaging; warehousing, and waste – comprises scope 3 emissions. It’s easy to see, therefore, the difficulty of gathering the breadth of data to ascertain the “talk-make-waste” impact of a product. ??
Consumer mindset
Everything a business, enterprise, or organization purchases ends up on a spreadsheet or ledger. They have the opportunity, therefore, to easily analyze their purchases, seeking out more environmentally and socially friendly options.
The same isn’t necessarily true of consumers who are responsible for 60 to 70% of direct and indirect emissions, resulting from the purchase of gargantuan amounts of goods and services.[2] And while 92% of consumers want to lead a sustainable lifestyle, only 16% are actively changing their behavior.[3] There’s obviously a gap between intention and action.
While companies are stepping up, refining, and implementing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, the demand and sale of products with less impact – recyclable and returnable packaging, documented origin of ingredients and components, and carbon transparency (see Just Salad) ?– continues to fall short of expectations.
Consumers are aware, but resistant to change. It comes down to human behavior. Since the early 1900s, and escalating during World War II, people were encouraged to recycle scrap aluminum. This movement increased in the late 1960s with the use of aluminum to make beverage cans. To encourage recycling, bottle bills were introduced, which paid up to 15 cents per returned container.
Without this incentive, the rate of recycling declined. It’s estimated that Americans throw away nearly $1 billion a year in wasted aluminum with an average recycling rate of 50%.[4] In comparison, the worldwide recycling rate is 69%.[5]
The realization that consumers are going to suddenly get onboard and by 2050 – just 27 years from now – dramatically reduce their carbon footprint and strive to be more sustainable is unrealistic.
What can be done
There’s a correlation between one’s household income and their carbon footprint with those in the higher echelon, buying more goods. With 21% of households representing 61% of total global income, there’s the opportunity to influence these buyers to purchase more environmentally and socially responsible goods.[6]
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A first step is to understand one’s direct and indirect emissions (scope 3) by using a carbon footprint calculator like ClimateHero, footprintcalculator.org, or conservation.org.
Despite my driving an older economy car, recycling, composting kitchen scraps, not buying package foods, shopping at secondhand stores, eating mostly a plant-based diet, setting my thermostat to 65 in the winter and 76 in the summer, and rarely flying, I generate 7.8 tons of CO2 per year. Eck!
Even though I can’t implement some of the recommended changes – such as installing solar panels (not possible with a metal roof) – I’m empowered to look for ways to further reduce my impact. I can frequent farmers markets instead of buying produce that’s been shipped across the country. Before making a purchase, I can consider whether I truly need the item or if there’s a substitute that’s more sustainable, such as cotton, hemp, or Tencel rather than polyester linens and clothing.
There’s the opportunity to further read labels, identifying products that are produced in America instead of overseas. ?I can equally choose products with less or recyclable packaging. And I can choose to frequent businesses that are committed to reducing their carbon footprint.
Weaving environmental responsibility into the everyday
Net zero means adding no additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Achieving it by 2050 is a lofty goal. Because not all emissions can be removed, it’s possible to offset their impact by planting trees, taking vacations closer to home instead of flying long distances, utilizing public transportation, or biking, leveraging renewable energy, eating less red meat, and replacing vehicles and power tools that use fossil fuels for those that use electricity.
In 1970, Woodsy Owl was introduced with the message, “Give a hoot don’t pollute.” It put the onus on individuals to become more aware of their activities, from not tossing garbage and cigarette butts while driving to recycling used motor oil instead of pouring it down storm drains.
We need the same vigilance, resolve, and mindset to invest in solutions that can make an immediate difference, and also make immeasurable small changes – every day – that add up to larger accomplishments. Aspiration to reduce our carbon footprint needs to become the application of cumulative undertakings both by enterprises and consumers. ??
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Thanks to Gustavo Quepón for his fabulous photo on Unsplash