Along with social and environmental benefits, there is a strong business advantage to monitoring the size of one’s carbon footprint, said Dr. Kelly. “Reducing your carbon footprint by scaling back energy usage, travel, waste and the like, reduces costs and potentially improves your bottom line.”

GobiSOFT is based on international greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, making it one of the most credible and complete carbon management systems on the market. Simple to use and affordable, GobiSOFT provides a one-stop solution for small to medium-sized organizations across North America that wish to get in front of the climate change challenge.

Climate change is becoming increasingly recognized as one of the biggest global challenges. There is growing consensus among leading scientific organizations that the earth’s climate is warming and that most of the observed increase in temperature is due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. “While many businesses want to reduce their impact on climate, tackling the challenge can be difficult,” said Dr. Kelly. “That’s where GobiSOFT can help. GobiSOFT makes it easy for organizations to measure, report and manage their carbon footprint.”

All a company needs is its utility and fuel bills, along with any travel records and waste and recycling information. Once entered online, GobiSOFT then produces a range of reports and charts, letting the user analyze the company’s footprint in terms of energy consumed, emissions produced, and cost of its environmental impact.

Managing an organisation’s carbon footprint is an important aspect to fighting climate change, said Gobi’s co-founder, Dr. Joe Kelly. “Businesses are facing significantly increased pressure from their stakeholders to reduce their carbon footprint.”

That pressure is likely to come from a combination of government and industry regulation as well as consumer demand for environmentally responsive business. “All businesses will likely experience a greater degree of scrutiny over their carbon footprint and may need to demonstrate environmentally responsible practices to remain competitive in the marketplace,” said Dr. Kelly, adding, “Failure to demonstrate environmental responsibility is increasingly perceived as a source of risk by investors and customers.”

There are other flow-on advantages for a small business that
demonstrates a commitment to sustainability in all aspects of its operations. I
believe it builds greater confidence in it’s customers that they are dealing
with a reliable company that is at the forefront of sound business practices.

This fosters good relationships and creates customer loyalty in the long
term. This reputation and relationship building is also helpful in building
sound networks between the business and other SMEs and large organisations.

Sustainability fosters the building of communities, and if a business demonstrates its
commitment to giving back to its community this is highly valued by customers.

Employee Engagement

A sustainability strategy has also benefits for both the employer and
employees. An employer that demonstrates a commitment to sustainability and
engages its employees in the process can build confidence in employees that
they work for a company that is dynamic and a business leader.

By including them in the development of the strategy it gives employees
a greater sense of responsibility and job satisfaction that goes further than
just their day to day work tasks by enabling them to help shape the businesses
direction and plans.

This benefits the employer by building employee loyalty, pride in work
and team spirit. Also the strategy can benefit the employer by influencing
behavioural change and awareness in employees to get them thinking of ways they
can work more efficiently and reduce their resource usage and budget
expenditures.

This greater employee consciousness can lead to greater work efficiencies and
savings to the bottom line.

Over recent years there as been a very obvious increase in the media coverage of environmental issues and sustainability in general.

This sort of media coverage is increasing through factors such as climate change; Al Gores’ movie An Inconvenient Truth; from factors closer to home such as Australia experiencing one of the longest droughts on record and the associated water restrictions; and also the fact the environment is now a political issue at all levels of government – all of which has contributed to media coverage.
School kids around the country are being taught about environmental issues which are creating a new generation of eco-warriors.
As a result of these factors there is an increasing awareness across society of the challenges the world faces and there is an increasing willingness by individuals to do their bit to reduce their ecological footprint.
A flow on from this there has been a definite shift in society’s priorities with customers have a growing awareness of the goods they are consuming and the reputation of service providers they are utilising, and what are the environmental and social impacts of these goods and services.
A well executed SME sustainability strategy can harness this greater awareness and shift in customer’s priorities, and even potentially deliver a market advantage in some cases where it is a key brand differentiator.
There is a growing trend of consumers’ conscience playing a part in their purchasing decisions. If business owners are going to promote their products as being green they have to be committed to a thorough and transparent sustainability campaign with published reports and independent verification to avoid the ‘green washing’ tag. In future posts I will discuss the steps in carrying out the strategy.
Sustainability is a rapidly growing field with more and more large organisations embedding sustainability into their corporate culture. Senior management are increasingly seeing the benefits of developing their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) both now and into the future, and understanding that it can deliver real economic advantages as part of their triple bottom line.
If the top end of town sees the business benefits and is working to develop their business to gain a competitive advantage of a carbon constrained economy of the future, it makes sense that SMEs should be seriously considering how they can benefit from embedding sustainability principles as core to their business strategies as well.
For SMEs undertaking a sustainability strategy is a much simpler task than for large organisations and it takes considerably less time to see real results, which should make it an even easier decision to take up the sustainability challenge.
I can hear all the small business people saying right now, “sounds great but I’m flat out already dealing with day to day business issues, and I don’t have time to even think about sustainability and the environment”.

It must be understood that working on business sustainability is not going to create extra work. It will in fact help small businesses work smarter with the resources they have whilst reducing its impacts on the environment.
It is a common misconception that sustainability is just about environmental and social responsibilities, small businesses need to think of a sustainability strategy as a business planning tool linked to their business plan.

Building a sustainable business can result in many benefits including reductions in overheads through taking advantage of new energy and water efficient technologies and behavioural changes in operations.

If the top end of town sees the business benefits and is working to develop their business to gain a competitive advantage of a carbon constrained economy of the future, it makes sense that SMEs should be seriously considering how they can benefit from embedding sustainability principles as core to their business strategies as well.

For SMEs undertaking a sustainability strategy is a much simpler task than for large organisations and it takes considerably less time to see real results, which should make it an even easier decision to take up the sustainability challenge.

I can hear all the small business people saying right now, “sounds great but I’m flat out already dealing with day to day business issues, and I don’t have time to even think about sustainability and the environment”. It must be understood that working on business sustainability is not going to create extra work.

It will in fact help small businesses work smarter with the resources they have whilst reducing its impacts on the environment.

It is a common misconception that sustainability is just about environmental and social responsibilities, small businesses need to think of a sustainability strategy as a business planning tool linked to their business plan.

Building a sustainable business can result in many benefits including reductions in overheads through taking advantage of new energy and water efficient technologies and behavioural changes in operations.

In future posts I will be highlighting some SME case studies where businesses have had significant benefits to their bottom line after undertaking a sustainability strategy.

8 October, 2010 – Today sees the launch of the Elusor Environmental Accounting Tools Network – a dynamic online community created to educate, connect and equip people with a passion for improving the environmental and sustainability performance of organisations, large and small.

This free and collaborative initiative was established to help overcome the hurdle many businesses face when embracing sustainability – finding the right data collection and reporting tools and the know-how to use them. Understanding how to measure and improve environmental and sustainable performance is rapidly becoming an invaluable asset in the emerging carbon economy.

The foundation purpose of the Elusor Network was to help businesses and organisations stay competitive and meet their reporting obligations through the sharing of knowledge, ideas and practical solutions. After all, with knowledge comes power – the power to change the way we live and work, and reduce our ecological footprint.

By joining the community, members can exchange ideas and opportunities, meet peers and industry experts from around the globe and learn about a wide range of environmental and sustainability accounting software for recording and reporting performance.

The website is modelled on social media principles, allowing members not just to meet and interact with others in the forums but contribute their own blogs, upload relevant content or publicise their own events or opportunities. The site is user-friendly and members can login using their Twitter or Facebook login.

Visit Elusor Environmental Accounting Tools Network and join for free today.

About the Elusor Environmental Accounting Tools Network
The Elusor Network was created by Stuart McComb, a passionate environmental and sustainability consultant. Stuart blogs about the environmental accounting and reporting field and writes wholly independent reviews on environmental software, which includes enterprise carbon accounting, corporate sustainability reporting, life cycle assessment and ecological footprint tools to name a few.

Stuart and his company Elusor Environmental Consulting do not have any affiliation with software providers or any other third party companies.

What does Elusor mean?
Elusor (pronounced e-loo-saw) is short for Elusor Macrurus which is the scientific name for the Mary River turtle, an endangered species that lives in Queensland Australia, and is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Media Enquiries:
Stuart McComb
Email: Stuart@elusor.com
Mobile: +61 423 872 463
Twitter: Elusor

It has reviews of the various environmental accounting software packages, and helps explain which environmental software applications are suitable for various industries and different business management and reporting requirements.

The site covers the wide selection of software packages including Ecological Footprint, Life Cycle Assessment, Corporate Sustainability Reporting (CSR), and the growing number of enterprise carbon accounting and emissions software applications.