Tourism is responsible for roughly 8% of the world’s carbon emissions…. Achieve net zero by 2030…. how do these figures relate to your business?
Measuring Emissions
Measuring and monitoring your energy usage is the essential first stage in any bid to save energy. It’s a skill that every organisation – from the quirkiest visitor attraction to the grandest hotel – should master. Reporting on your emissions creates a baseline to work from and helps provide stakeholders, customers and staff with a demonstration of commitment and an update on progress. Increasingly, funding from both private and public sectors will come with the requirement to measure and reduce your negative impacts.
All methods of calculating your carbon footprint will require you to collect and collate data on your energy consumption and the resultant emissions.
So how do you start?
- Membership of the Green Tourism scheme includes an exclusive interactive Carbon Calculator to work out your annual carbon footprint and demonstrate it to customers.
- VisitScotland.org has a good factsheet on Energy monitoring
- The Edinburgh Climate Commission has a good explanation of carbon footprint measurement and setting carbon reduction targets. The first step is to calculate your carbon footprint, by taking stock of the greenhouse gases that your business directly and indirectly emits each year. Once data is collated you can use a tool or a simple spreadsheet to calculate your emissions. If using a spreadsheet consumption data will need to be multiplied with relevant emission factors which are published on an annual basis by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Energy (BEIS).
- There are several free resources listed by the Climate Commission, but a good start point is: ZeroWasteScotland’s Measure Energy Use
Measuring Waste
What do you throw away? Why? And when?
- ZeroWasteScotland has a free guide and waste-tracking spreadsheets that are a really useful free resource.
Measuring Food Waste
If you want to reduce food and drink waste then you need to know what you’re wasting, where you’re wasting it and why. Measuring and monitoring your food waste isn’t as difficult as you might think.
First, you decide what information you need, then you put in place a system that will collect the data. You then analyse and evaluate that data to get the information you need for decision-making.
That information provides an important baseline. Continued monitoring of your waste will gauge the effectiveness of any actions you put in place and help keep staff motivated. There’s a helpful ZeroWasteScotland guide here
The ZWS Food Waste Reduction team can help you turn your food waste mountain into a more manageable molehill, saving you money and helping Scotland achieve its ambitious food waste reduction target. To discuss their food and drink opportunity assessments, email food.drink@zerowastescotland.org.uk or call 01786 433930.