In our latest strategic plan, the Co-op Board committed to the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Over the past few years, we have continued making our best efforts towards the financial health of the Co-op as well as our staff (e.g., raising wages and making health/dental benefits available). We felt that we needed to work more on our environmental commitment, and thus the Board decided to participate in the Climate Smart program this year.
Climate Smart has worked with small- and medium-sized businesses to help cut carbon emissions for the past twelve years. The process has three main parts: to complete an inventory of our business’ greenhouse gas emissions, to create a reduction plan for our emissions, and to communicate our plan to the community. I attended two training sessions in Vancouver, and Sheena worked on the numbers, which took a lot of research – to the point of compiling dozens of invoices and even weighing garbage!
We worked directly with our client advisor and entered all of the data into their web-based software, which compiles and reports on the results. We’re just about finished with the process; at the end, we’ll be a Climate Smart Certified Business along with hundreds of other small businesses across Canada. We’ll also put our reduction plan into action before the end of this year.
If you’d like to hear more about our results and our plan, come to the AGM! I will give a report on our Climate Smart certification so you’ll hear about our business in particular. The AGM takes place on Tuesday, June 11th at 5:00 PM at Mansons Hall.
