When’s the right time to start carbon reporting?

When’s the right time to start anything? There are a few options; 

Be a Leader and start immediately. This might make you an early starter who will need to determine what to do and how to do it. This may require making mistakes, learning what works and what doesn’t work and making appropriate changes as needed. 

By being a leader in undertaking carbon reporting and implementing carbon emission reduction strategies you create a story you can tell to your market and use as a competitive advantage to obtain more contracts and customers.

Be a Follower and wait until others have started. Let others learn and make the mistakes and find the best way to do it and then implement best practices from what the Leaders have learnt.  

By being a follower, particularly if you’re in the early group of followers for your industry, you may still have a competitive advantage. Implementing carbon reporting and emission reduction strategies isn’t just about getting new contracts, it’s also about attracting employees who want to join a business where their values are aligned. Todays’ environmentally- conscious consumers are also future employees and those who will embrace the need to implement improvements into your business.

Be a Compliance Follower and wait until you are required to do it. By waiting until required to do it you will lose any competitive advantage.

By being a compliance follower you will tick the boxes for your contracts. You won’t have any competitive advantage for gaining new contracts and attracting employees who have an interest in the environment. 

So, when is the right time to start? Perhaps the better answer is, yesterday. When you start will depend on the goals of the business, whether your business is a leader in your industry or a follower. It will depend on whether you have ambitious goals for the business or are content with the status quo.

What is clear is that decisions on business contracts will no longer be based on price, quantity, quality, service and reliability. The new key number that will be relevant to the decision will be the carbon emissions number.

What type of business do you have? Is it a Leader, a Follower or a Compliance Follower?

We are proud to advise that this article was written by the team and not produced by AI.

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