Demystifying Carbon Reporting: Understanding Why We Need to Report
I remember my teenage years living in Canada where I first got seriously interested in the environment. Rachel Carson’s classic book, “Silent Spring” about the effect of pesticides on the environment was read with great interest and I became involved in the environmental movement, attending my first major environmental conference at the tender age of 16.
Over the years since then, we have become more aware of the impact we are making on the environment around us and the world as a whole. Nations around the world have gathered together to discuss potential solutions, they’ve signed Protocols and Agreements and developed global frameworks.
Legislation has been enacted requiring large corporations in Australia (and in many other countries around the world) to report on their carbon emissions..
But it’s not just the large corporations who need to be collecting the data. Every business that supplies to the large corporations will need to provide their carbon emissions figures to those large corporations so that they can provide complete data.
For example, on 17th August 2023, Coles announced that it would engage with 75% of their suppliers (in dollar value terms) to provide scientific based carbon emissions data by 30 June 2027..
You see:
Every time we use transport, cars, buses, trains and planes, the vehicles emit gases which are harmful to our planet.
Every time we turn on the power, lights, fridges, air conditioning, computers, the electricity generation emits gases which are harmful to our planet.
Every time we do pretty much anything, we are emitting gases which are harmful to our planet.
And those emissions need to be recorded and reported, and then reduced. But what are the emissions we’re talking about?
There are a number of gases which are collectively called greenhouse gases as they work like the glass in a greenhouse by letting visible light from the Sun pass through the atmosphere, but these gases absorb energy from the Earth and warm the atmosphere. Hence the term global warming. The more of these gases that are emitted into the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere becomes.
Carbon dioxide is the most common of the gases and is used as the global unit of measurement with all other gases converted into a carbon dioxide equivalent.
In its simplest form, carbon reporting is measuring the amount of carbon dioxide equivalents that a business (or person) has emitted.
We are proud to advise that this article was written by the team and not produced by AI.