Transportation is a big part of a city’s carbon footprint, responsible for over 25% of total carbon output.

There are some ideas about how to reduce the transportation footprint:

• Idle-free zone –  Vancouver started the program a few years ago. It is now illegal to have your car idled for over 3 minutes.
• Electric vehicle incentives – newly built apartments built in Vancouver are now required to have electric vehicle charging posts.  Government generally give out great cash incentives to subsidize the  higher-priced EVs.  Car manufacturers are finally getting their act together in putting out nicely built vehicles that suits the needs of drivers in North America.  (Go Prius, Go Volt!)
• Better Transit system – Growing up in Asia and North America, it is easy to tell the difference – the population density of major cities in North America are simply not enough to sustain a profitable system (maybe except New York City).  In Asia, any major city will have packed subways, highspeed trains, and it’s great.
• HOV lanes – encourages carpooling and ridesharing
• Work from Home – most of the times it works, but it requires quite a dedication and concentration to be able to work from home without distraction.

Any other ideas you want to suggest?

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Some people had asked me before, how to make my business more “Green”? There are numerous articles on the web, and they can  be summarized into a few steps.

1. Dedicate personnel/Green team

One of the most important aspect of energy conservation in the workplace is personnel involvement.  This is not as simple as one would think.  First of all, the personnel would need to have the full support of the entire company – namely, executives, all levels of management, as well as staffs.  The support will need to come from political and also financial aspects.  Therefore, it is best to form a Green Team that includes personnel from all levels  of the company.

2. Develop a Goal

With people in place, it is implied to have a goal.  Goal setting is tricky – look at the Coppenhagen Climate Change Accord.  As one of the first goal in energy conservation, it is better to make the goal achievable, and also measurable.  Some companies try to achieve the impossible – while it’s great,  but it’s  just like setting goals for weight lost – it makes no sense to lose 100 pounds within 2 weeks.

3.Work out the Plan

With a goal in mind, the plan development will involve setting the right timeline, and inputing the right amount of investments will make the plan right.  Certainly use the  word  ”investment” – this is crucial for creating the business case for the money spent now can be recouped by the cost of energy saved in the next few years.

4. Communicate transparently

The golden “Triple Bottom-Line” rule  - where the company, society, and environment benefits from such a green business must be mentioned somehow.  The entire company will need to receive any news, provide feed back, and get the Green Team to modify the plan if needed.  This may include any additional investments needed, the energy saved (in dollar value).   Let the staff know about this, and the society will know.  The more transparent the communication is, the more involvement one can receive.

Some resources from the book, The Climate Challenge,  101 Solutions to Global Warming

• Carbon Calculator – http://www.carbonneutral.com/carbon-calculators/
• Workplace Eco-Audit – http://cupe.ca/forms/ecoaudit.php
• Zero Footprint – http://www.zerofootprint.net/

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Recently that has been a lot of talk about the future of business lies in sustainability.  What is sustainabllity? At first it seems like it’s a big, fuzzy word like “paradigm”.

Here is what sustainability means:

“For the business enterprise, sustainable development means adopting business strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today while protecting, sustaining and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future.”

International Institute for Sustainable Development

The business case for sustainability:

1. Brand differentiation and reputation management
2. Risk management and maintaining customers
3. New marke opportunities
4. Employee recruitment, rentention, and productivity
5. Access to capital
6. Increased efficiency
7. Improved relations with Regulators

Of course, some of the challenges for sustainability, particularly for Small and Medium sized companies are:

1. Implementation costs and resources
2. sourcing supplies
3. educating consumers
4. Internal Communication and Training
5. Reporting and Credentialing

For Konmin Software, the sustainability issue is really as simple as follows,

Konmin Software is committed to sustainability. We minimize our overhead by maintaining a 100% virtual office, and allow our developers to telecommute to work. We encourage our staff to use public transit when visiting our clients. We are also committed to a paper-less workplace.

Is your business practicing sustainability?

If not, have a chat with me!

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