Practical Ways to Lower Your Business’s Carbon Footprint

Can Reducing Waste Cut Corporate Carbon Footprints?

Carbon footprints emerged in the 1990s as a way to inform people that their lifestyles were harming the planet. Pretty much everyone has heard the term by now, yet meaningful action still lags behind the headlines, but the pressure is building.

In the era of Greta Thunberg, sweeping heatwaves, and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it’s clear that carbon footprints are more than a passing fad. Businesses cannot afford to ignore the environment any longer, even if only for self-preservation. South Africa’s new Climate Change Act makes this abundantly clear through the introduction of carbon budgets. The good news? A practical solution may be hiding in your wastepaper basket.

Corporate Carbon Footprints Explained

The term “carbon footprint” encompasses all greenhouse gas emissions caused by a specific activity. For businesses, that includes direct emissions (scope 1) and indirect emissions (scope 2 and scope 3) from their entire value chain.

Examples of direct emissions:

Emissions from manufacturing or other industrial processes
Fuel combustion at your facility or from vehicles you own
Fugitive emissions from machinery

Examples of indirect emissions:

Electricity usage
Refrigeration
Business travel
Supply chain logistics
Disposal and waste treatment

Business owners can track their greenhouse gas emissions through carbon accounting. The goal is to quantify your environmental impact and gather enough data to drive it down. The most widely-used carbon accounting system is The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, closely followed by Harvard’s e-liability method, which was developed in 2022.

The Connection Between Waste and Carbon Emissions

Waste is part of the GHG Protocol’s official scope 3 emissions list. These are indirect emissions that can come from downstream sources, making them extremely challenging to track. Yet research from McKinsey & Co suggests that scope 3 emissions often make up 90% of a company’s carbon footprint.

With this knowledge in hand, steering your environmental strategy away from Big Pollution and towards daily operations starts to make more sense. Operational waste is one of the few indirect emissions sources that businesses can control. Diverting waste away from landfills not only reduces the CO2 and methane that arises during decomposition, but further upstream as well.

Reducing End-of-Life Emissions Through Recycling

Recycling is a sustainable waste disposal method that reduces carbon emissions both upstream and downstream. Downstream, recycling waste instead of landfilling avoids the greenhouse gas emissions that result from natural decomposition.

The upstream impact is perhaps more significant. Recycling generates secondary raw materials that can replace virgin resources in manufacturing. Feeding production lines with recycled materials reduces reliance on energy-intensive extraction methods such as mining and drilling. Not only does this reduce a business’s carbon footprint, but it can also make production more cost-effective.

Integrating recycling into corporate value chains is the next logical step towards building a circular economy, which is an important objective of extended producer responsibility. Investing in recyclable product design and building closed-loop supply chains offers the dual benefit of lowering carbon emissions and maintaining EPR compliance.

Recycling Initiatives to Reduce Scope 3 Carbon Emissions

Recycling can help businesses reduce waste at different stages of their value chain and product lifecycle, ultimately lowering their carbon footprint.

Material substitutions: reducing waste upstream improves downstream efficiency and lowers overall emissions. By working with suppliers that share their environmental values, business owners can increase recycled content levels in their products and packaging.
Recycling office waste: wasteful day-to-day operations can elevate an organisation’s carbon footprint. Businesses can mitigate this by recycling paper and packaging, choosing reusable cleaning supplies, and refurbishing IT equipment before it becomes e-waste.
Take-back schemes: this downstream initiative involves collecting waste at the post-consumer stage to divert recyclables away from landfills. Take-back schemes are a core strategy of EPR and help to develop stable end-markets for recycled materials.

Another Option: Offsetting Emissions with Carbon Credits

Recycling is just one channel for reducing waste and lowering carbon emissions. Because a carbon footprint spans all aspects of business, it must be tackled holistically. In high-emissions industries, such as transportation, cutting scope 2 and scope 3 emissions may not be enough to meaningfully reduce a company’s carbon footprint.

In such cases, businesses can turn to carbon trading to offset unavoidable emissions. South Africa’s voluntary carbon market is managed by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The trading platform allows businesses to buy and sell carbon credits, each representing one tonne of CO2 reduction.

The idea is to invest in decarbonisation, green energy, and other projects that reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. While not a silver bullet, carbon credits can be a valuable tool for businesses that need to balance ambition and action towards net zero emissions.

Final Takeaway

Reducing an organisation’s carbon footprint is a complex yet critical task that demands action at every stage of the value chain, including waste management. Recycling is a practical place to start, especially due to its growing role in extended producer responsibility.

By eliminating operational waste and supporting downstream markets for recycled products, businesses can build low-emissions systems that thrive in the circular economies of the future. Those who adopt sustainable waste practices today will be the environmental leaders of tomorrow. The time to act is now.

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