I’m a bit obsessive... ten years ago, I developed a monitoring system to track everything going in and out of the office — print orders, paper weights, mill locations, hosting providers, hardware and other materials. This allowed our three person company to review our practices regularly and make decisions to reduce waste and increase efficiencies.

Carbon neutrality was our next milestone. For credibility purposes, we couldn’t perform our own audit so we approached Ecocentric Carbon Management of Vancouver. They assured us that a full and valid audit was possible with or without our monitoring records.

We’d always had resource-friendly policies like switching off equipment and printing both sides on 100% post consumer paper, so we were curious what the audit would show. Our monitoring records were sent over to Ecocentric and they proceeded to break down our impacts based on three categories of emissions.

Will Wright at Ecocentric explains that there are three scopes considered in greenhouse gas (GHG) auditing. Recommendations for reductions are also suggested in the final document. Scope one determines the GHG emissions generated by things like heating our studio and auto fuel. Scope two measures the GHG emitted from electricity used to run office equipment and lighting. And scope three calculates other emissions from outsourced services not controlled by our company but central to our business. This included impacts like air travel to conferences, client paper usage and the transportation of materials to clients. Even the city’s recycling emissions were included in these measurements.

Once Ecocentric completed their audit, we received a formal document. Recommend-ations were made. For us this included considering replacing our high efficiency gas furnace for an electric one since gas is considered “dirty” compared to hydroelectric power. Other recommendations included continuing to educate and encourage our clients to reduce print quantities and put strategy first.

Last month iD2 submitted the audit report to Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT), a provincial Crown corporation set up by the BC government to acquire credible GHG offsets. We purchased offsets for our impact and the impact of our client's production work and made a highly affordable investment for 2009 and 2010.

Going carbon neutral has had an added bonus—reigniting creativity. We are working on a new promotion piece now that will re-use an 8.5" × 11" sheet of paper and have multiple uses.

Ultimately becoming carbon neutral is part of our growth — our evolution as a company. Its made sense for the quadruple bottom line. In a marketplace where everyone is claiming to be green and sustainable, we feel good knowing we can quantify our claim and back it up with a credible and recognized third party process.

Now to work on that colour issue...

Valerie Elliott CGD Cert PR, Owner, iD2 Communications Inc., leads iD2's vision to work for clients who are helping to change the way the world defines success. An award-winning designer and regular speaker, Valerie combines over 20 years of industry experience into all iD2 projects. She assists clients in developing sustainable strategies to reach client's communication objectives. In her spare time, Valerie rescues native plants in danger of being destroyed by development in Canada's most endangered ecosystem, the Garry Oak grassland.