Yesterday I discussed carbon calculators and it is no surprise that there are so many ways to calculate your carbon footprint. Forbes decided to tackle the corporate carbon footprint concept in an article today and surprise – the article also details how complicated it is to calculate carbon emissions for companies.

 

But it seems that Starbucks can attribute about two ounces of carbon to the environment for every cup of coffee it serves. This doesn’t include the carbon needed to transport the coffee from store to store. Interestingly, one wonders if it makes sense to not take into consideration whether buying coffee at a retail outlet results in more carbon emissions than brewing the coffee yourself. In other words, do we look at big corporations as huge polluters because of the sheer volume of carbon they produce or is there perhaps a better way to measure how green a company is?

 

For example, could a coffee company start to market that their carbon footprint per cup of coffee is lower than the competition? It seems there is an opportunity for companies to start looking at how they are doing in relation to others in their segments. I would expect this sort of information to be used in marketing campaigns this year and in the future.

 

If you are interested in various companies and how they are dealing with measuring and reducing their carbon footprint’s, check this article out.