How Carbon Positive Can Improve Corporate Social Responsibility

When it comes to corporate social responsibility, many businesses build goals that aim towards reducing carbon emissions, whether it’s on-site or through their supply chain. While reducing one’s impact on the environment is a great start, a business could expand its impact by moving towards carbon positivity: when a business becomes more responsible for emissions savings than reducing emissions.

Carbon positive works like this: after reducing emissions–from using cleaner energy, recycling more, or using only renewable or recycled resources–businesses can move towards a “carbon positive” practice where they create more solutions to address emissions, essentially creating more good that neutralizes their emissions and then some. What does that look like in practice? The Kingdom of Bhutan, for example, absorbs more carbon than it produces by 3, which means it’s sucking up more pollution than it creates, making it “carbon positive.”

So how can businesses today move towards carbon positivity? Here are a few simple starts:

1. Plant and farm more. Gardening, farming, and composting removes carbon, and has a huge impact on the environment. For businesses, rethinking the surrounding lawn and turning it into a drought-resistant yard or business garden will help move towards carbon positivity. Even if you don’t have the grounds on your campus to plant or garden, you can find other alternatives to create a carbon farm. For example, your business could buy a plot in a community garden, and employees can work together to grow vegetables, fruits, or flowers. Or, you can start your own community garden to encourage a greener community with your neighbors.

2. Produce more energy than consumed. If you already have a structure in place for renewable energy (such as wind generators or solar panels), you can expand its use to others to offset carbon emissions from dirtier sources. For example, businesses that can produce more electricity through their own solar panels and sell it back to utility companies are helping to support and encourage cleaner energy.

3. Start new projects at zero, then build towards positivity. Starting at net zero might take a lot of pre-planning, but that work upfront is a lot easier to work from than trying to reduce emissions. This is especially applicable to new buildings or projects: whether you’re expanding your offices or building a new site for production, you can take the ideas of a carbon positive home and incorporate them into your building project. From a tighter building envelope to green walls, you can ensure that you’re not spending energy after the project on reducing emissions, and instead, working towards a positive impact.

Overall, carbon positive actions are a great supplement to current reduction plans. To learn more strategies for corporate social responsibility, follow our blog.