Zero Carbon Policies often don’t make sense to me. Is there a golden Standard?

Question

So many companies talk about their policies to be sustainable or zero carbon. They go to great extends to change their processes and products to achieve that. Apart from not creating emissions, what is the next best thing?

In other words… is it worth replacing plastic straws in the office with paper ones or donate once a year a new scooter to India in replacement of a horrible rIcksaw, that is spitting soot like a London Chimney in the 1800s?

A more concrete example: Nespresso goes to great extends to recycle their pods. They create special plastic packaging, pay for the postage (which creates emissions) and ofc spend energy to recover the aluminium from the pods. Would it make sense to instead ship their coffee machines with an eco conscious ship instead of a mazut guzzling behemoth?

In: Technology

Answer 1

There’s no simple way to answer this, because it’ll vary so much between industries. There are definitely going to be good practices and some things that are done more for the look than the real benefit.

Your Nespresso example is a good one. First off, where do most of their carbon emissions come from? That’s hard for us to know, from the outside, unless they choose to report on it. Could they switch to more eco conscious ships for transport? Maybe, but the containers full of coffee machines and pods will be mixed among numerous others on a big cargo ship. The logistics and costs of using only less polluting ships are potentially challenging.

Of course, the most obvious environmental issue with Nespresso pods is that the whole business model is based around single use plastic pods and metal pods (which may or may not produce a lot of carbon emissions but definitely do create plastic waste). So they focus on recycling, which has some environmental benefits, and perhaps even more importantly for Nespresso, helps customers feel better about the very visible waste.

Now, the *best* environmental solution might be to not use single use pods at all, but obviously that is, at the least, a massive shake-up to Nespresso’s business model. So that’s not on the cards.