The climate crisis has been a hot topic over recent years, and as individuals continue to look for new ways to reduce their carbon footprint and live a more sustainable lifestyle, the heat is on for businesses to follow suit.
Whatever industry your business operates within, there’s no escaping the ever-growing demands of today’s more discerning and environmentally-conscious customer. With the 2030 Global Climate Deadline, which decrees that global emissions must be halved by that date before going on to reach net zero by 2050, approaching quickly, there’s no time like the present to start doing the work.
Whilst it might seem like an overwhelming task, there are some ways to make the process easier, and platforms like French start-up Greenly.Earth (which you can find out more about here) are paving the way for small and medium-sized businesses to reduce their carbon footprints, fast.
Quickly becoming the go-to carbon accounting platform for businesses, Greenly.earth offers a unique software solution that allows SMBs to measure their carbon footprint and ultimately take steps to both reduce and offset it. It’s all based on international carbon accounting standards including the TCFD and GHG Protocol, too, which means it’s a proven and trustworthy way to get a hold on your emissions once and for all.
Bringing the latest in technological innovations to the table, Greenly.earth automates the collection and analysis of data sources and provides a user-friendly interface that is quick to navigate and easy to understand. And as well as analysing current performance, it helps companies to do better by informing carbon reduction strategies and supporting both employee training and supplier engagement so that they can quickly, effectively and sustainably reduce their overall environmental impact.
Reports offer great detail and follow the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, all coming together in one increasingly popular system that a growing number of businesses looking to improve their sustainability credentials are embracing.
Greenly sets itself apart from other carbon monitoring platforms in the field due to its focus on smaller companies, as opposed to the large firms that are usually targeted as candidates for such initiatives. Currently, SMBs make up 90 percent of its customer base, the majority of these initially based in France before the brand carved out a share of the market elsewhere in the EU, as well as in the UK and the USA.
Now three years old, the platform recently rebranded from its former name, Greenly, to reaffirm its identity and mark the beginning of a new chapter in which it hopes to further accelerate its growth.
So, how exactly does the platform work? Well, businesses utilising the platform begin by connecting their financial and accounting data with Greenly.earth’s software, which then calculates an estimate of your emissions based on your spend. For the largest emission sources, it will ask you a string of questions to clarify the details of the spend so that it can provide a more accurate estimate, and learns your spending habits over time so that it won’t need to keep asking you the same questions repeatedly.
If you’ve always thought that tracking such data would be a headache, then think again, because there are no manual entries required here – so as well as saving the planet, it will save you time and money too, and most likely, leave you asking yourself only why you didn’t do it sooner.
Greenly.earth is already linked to a host of data sources – we’re talking in the hundreds of thousands – and is adding more all the time to continuously improve the offering and the accuracy of the reports it generates for users. Currently, integrations include energy providers, cloud services and e-commerce platforms, amongst others – so suffice it to say, it’s pretty well informed, and doesn’t base its estimates on just anything.
Of course, for those who take their environmental impact seriously, it’s not enough to simply know where your own business’ carbon emissions stand currently, as the impact of the suppliers you choose to use must also be taken into consideration. Greenly.earth is allowing users to hold their suppliers to account in this respect by sharing a link to the platform requesting further information about their own carbon emissions, which have proved to be an empowering move for business owners looking to make better choices.
The idea is that by recruiting suppliers onto the platform, Greenly.earth can make a broader impact beyond small and medium-sized businesses alone, although of course, it’s something that will take time.
In the meantime, Greenly.earth’s support team, which is made up of knowledgeable climate experts, is on hand to support businesses from onboarding to measuring your carbon footprint, and will guide you through every step of the process – ultimately helping you to work out exactly how and where you can reduce your environmental impact and even communicate your efforts to your stakeholders and the wider public.
So, if you’ve been keen to improve your business’ sustainability credentials, then it’s now easier to do so than ever.
