How To Be Kind To The Environment and Save Money at the Same Time

Recently it has become clear that it is more important to do whatever you can to reduce your carbon emissions and save energy in a constant effort to be conscious of an overall environmental impact. However, you don’t have to break the bank while you save the environment. In fact, there are actually some things that you can do to save the environment and save money, too!

Your efforts can start by simply stopping into a vintage clothing store. Clothes require a lot of energy during the process of their creation. Therefore, shopping for secondhand clothes cuts down on the amount of energy that you are indirectly using when you buy things off the rack. Not to mention, with a bit of effort and creativity, you can use secondhand finds to create a style that’s all your own, usually at a much lower cost than if the clothes were new.

If you’re the type that likes to invest your money in order to enjoy future gains, consider investing in companies that have demonstrated a commitment to creating sustainable living and other environmentally friendly practices.

Finally, see if your local area offers a produce cooperative. This would allow you to purchase locally grown produce on a payment plan that is usually very cost effective. However, since the types of produce received will largely depend on the type of produce that happens to be in season, you may have to learn how to cook vegetables that you might not have ordinarily purchased if you were just shopping at the grocery store. However, if you are serious about making an environmental impact in your local area, the act of joining a produce cooperative allows you to support the livelihood of farmers who operate out of small establishments that are often very environmentally friendly.

Is Measuring Scope 3 Emissions Really Worth It?

Warmth for Helsinki, Warmth for the planet
Image by melancholic optimist via Flickr

Perhaps you’ve heard that a few environmental groups are looking beyond the “direct emissions” level of your business’s total carbon footprint. The direct emissions of your operation and the level of emissions necessary to produce the power you use can be very substantial indeed. But they are not the be all end all of how many greenhouse gases your business produces. Since nearly all businesses perform similar, often parallel operations within an industry (and many that form a daisy chain of unrelated but interconnected industries), the results of greenhouse gas emissions tests can reveal a lot about how efficiently your company is run, in relation to its peers. And since we all share a biosphere that is under potential threat from these gases, it behooves everyone to consider their actions and their consequences.

Direct consumption of fossil fuels is known as Scope 1 emissions – those are obvious. How many fossil fuels do you put into your various tanks, in order to make your business run. And Scope 2 emissions are also fairly obvious – the power you use that is produced by fossil fuels, and how many emissions you cause via gas heating and whatnot. But a new concept has gained ground. Known as Scope 3 emissions, these measure every possible connection between your business and the use of fossil fuels. While this may in fact account for 75% of more of the greenhouse gases emitted in all business operations, the fact is that a lot of businesses are taking a “wait and see” approach to this new potential standard.

After all, is a company really responsible for how many greenhouse gases its suppliers use, in producing the raw materials that it might need? And is a company actually accountable for the greenhouse gases that its employees use in their daily commute to and from work? How about from when those same employees go out of town on business trips? What level of accountability should a company have for the ultimate direction its products physically take? Eventually a product requires greenhouse gases to dispose of it, after all.