Posted on October 2, 2009 - by Janet Smith

Counting Emissions: One Product Line, One SKU, and One Supply Chain Vendor at a Time.

Now that’s a tall order.

For the millions of small to medium size enterprises (SME) in the world, the concept of tracking, measuring and improving greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiencies is not  “in plan”, in fact it’s not even on the table.  After the last 12 months, ‘revenues and repeat customers’ are the top priorities.

However, it’s on the table for a growing number of mega-entities, and it’s not easy. Public reporting companies live every day, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”  They also know that capturing these carbon metrics is about as much fun as calculating mark-to-market, required by Sarbanes-Oxley.

I attended Competing in a Low-Carbon Economy: Climate Change in the Supply Chain, a webinar sponsored by Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO).  The presentations by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), PepsiCo, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Applied Materials were thought-provoking. 

Imagine you are HP, the largest technology firm in the world with 310,000 employees worldwide.  Imagine having to answer the probing question, “What are your emissions, your forecasts and how are you improving the numbers?”  (Almost reads like industry analysts questioning a line item from the income statement.)

“The Carbon Footprint is becoming a Carbon Fingerprint – Unique to Each Company/Brand”, reported PepsiCo’s Mary White. 

White said that 30% of Pepsi’s carbon footprint is cooling at the retail level: grocery stores, hotels, sporting events, etc.  It’s impressive that PepsiCo can calculate that number, and ultimately influence improvement in retail equipment.

Think about the complexity of these calculations, the standards, guidelines and processes.

HP has multiple product lines, 10,000 SKUs that refresh often and a supply chain that is 6-7 tiers deep.  In fact HP reported that they are the largest IT supply chain in the world. 

Imagine HP asking Intel, the EPA’s largest green power purchaser, the question above, and Intel asking Applied Materials, Intel’s supplier, the same.   Without the commitment of companies and the CDP, this process has all the capabilities of a chain letter gone wrong.

But, the beauty is, it will be done right.

The commitment by major enterprises to measure and manage, and of course for many, sell application software and databases, is inspiring.  It will happen, it will be executed professionally and it will happen faster than you can imagine.

Think back 5 years ago; we didn’t have iPhones, we didn’t text our kids, and we may have even used a map from AAA.  Visual Earth was completed by Microsoft in 1998 and now we have voice instruction to take the next left as a standard GPS package in new automobiles. 

Major firms are committing, and that’s good news.  It will take time, and it won’t be easy; but it will happen.

Next Green Marketing post:

Firms invest, but what marketing benefit is derived as consumers tune out?