Our company carbon footprint is 152.31 tonnes per year or 2.87 tonnes per employee. We know this because a student from the UCT Graduate School of Business was kind enough to work it out for us. A carbon footprint, for those of you who've been living under a rock, is “the measure of the environmental impact of a particular individual or organization's lifestyle or operation, measured in units of carbon dioxide.” (WhatIs blog)

Basically, it tells us how badly we're messing up the environment by going about our daily Quirk activities. Our footprint was worked out using data like our yearly electricity bill, the distance each Star travels to work each day, the number of PCs bought per year and the gigantic amount of travelling Rob does. While our footprint is below the national average, we have to get it down to less than 2 tonnes per employee if we, to quote Rob, “want to save the planet”. 

Our energy use and recycling activities are both on track so far, but we'll be looking into energy saving light bulbs, the possibility of more conference calls to reduce the effect of Rob's travelling and the planting of trees, even if Janine “has to buy them and plant them in her own garden”. Rackspace, who we use to host our servers, has already successfully offset their carbon footprint simply by planting trees.  

So we're taking some steps and any suggestions you may have are welcome. Figuring out what kind of effect you have as a company is not just a good idea, it's essential. Without getting too “inspirational speechy” on you, I simply urge you to at least figure out what kind of impact you are having on the environment so that you can start working out how to do something about it. Is your company thinking about its carbon footprint?