The carbon footprint, the heart of the strategy of sustainable companies
🎬 Interview with Philippe Mangard, leader of the Global Climate Initiatives platform.
Can you introduce yourself and GCI's activity?
Hello my name is Philippe Mangeard.
Ten years ago, with a number of friends, we launchedthe Global Climate Initiatives platform, which today allows any company, any community, small, medium or large, in France or abroad, to perfectly identify and calculate the greenhouse gas emissions of its activity and, consequently, to draw up a complete and compliant carbon report.
How can a carbon strategy create value?
A carbon strategy can create economic value on several fronts.
The first is the savings that a carbon footprint will detect. It will detect waste, misuse, unnecessary travel. Secondly, it is the best response to market demand.
Today, there is not a single local authority, not a single large company that asks its service provider to commit to this low-carbon dynamic, which obviously begins with the drafting of its carbon footprint, and beyond that, the sustainability of companies is at stake. We cannot imagine today our new employees working in a company that would not be aware of the climate emergency and of the interest, I would say the duty, of each of us to get involved in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
How cost-effective is the carbon footprint?
It is also important to understand that a carbon footprint is always profitable.
A carbon footprint, first benefits: reduction of waste, reduction of misuse, reduction of travel, unnecessary transport, several thousand euros or even tens of thousands of euros of savings that will detect this carbon footprint, which I remind you on the Global Climate Initiatives platform costs a few hundred euros.
But beyond that, the carbon footprint will allow us to think about reorganizing flows, reorganizing the supply chain and generally fighting better in front of our competitors and rivals with innovation, which is a guarantee of the sustainability of the development of companies.
Who in the company should develop the carbon strategy?
The carbon assessment is an accounting exercise. Like any accounting exercise, it must lead to forecasts and action plans, i.e. to implement a strategy to reduce its carbon footprint.
This will be decided collectively by all the people in the company who will have worked together to draw up the carbon assessment. The carbon assessment can be the starting point for a new organization of the company decided collectively and baptized with a nice word: low carbon strategy.
What you also have to understand is that you can't reduce your carbon footprint alone within your company, you have to involve your ecosystem. Everyone will have understood from their carbon footprint that 50 to 70, 80% of their carbon footprint depends on their suppliers.
It is therefore important to start asking them to carry out their own carbon footprint so that they can provide you with the carbon weight attached to their products or services at the same time as the price and timeframe, understanding that from one supplier to another you may have a ratio of 1 to 10 in the carbon weight.
I think that in a perfect world, the one that awaits us in two or three years, purchasing departments will choose suppliers based on the quality of the product, the price of the product, the lead time of the product and the carbon weight of the product.
So any entrepreneur who wants to keep his customers, who wants to differentiate himself from his competitors, must commit to doing his carbon footprint, produce what is called the emission factor per unit of work, products or services and to improve his own carbon performance must impose, I mean impose, to his suppliers, at least the most important ones, to give him in turn his carbon footprint and the carbon weight of the products and services he buys from them.
