“Managing your carbon footprint is no longer a nice to have but a necessity for success. “Brandon Urdang, Liberty.
Liberty Holdings (“Liberty”), the financial services group, has taken up the challenge of interrogating its carbon footprint by analysing its emitting activities at various intervals throughout the year. This practice has assisted the organisation in identifying consumption anomalies, saving money and ensuring that data capturing and reporting structures work effectively.
Liberty employs the services of Carbon Calculated to work with them throughout the year. We calculate Liberty’s emissions at regular intervals to ensure that the busy reporting season is a seamless process as carbon data is known to be accurate and readily available.
Capturing the relevant data for the Liberty buildings holds its challenges. The accurate recording of diesel usage in generators, electricity consumption, water, as well as air-conditioning and refrigeration gas refills, demands persistent oversight. By constantly reviewing its consumption patterns, Liberty is able to effectively and efficiently manage their use of resources across all facilities.
Brandon Urdang, Sustainability Analyst at Liberty, reaffirms this point: “The environment is a shared resource and collectively we need to contribute to its protection. Liberty, as a corporate citizen, is continually working to improve the accuracy of its carbon footprint data. Real time data allows us to actively manage and reduce the companies’ contribution to climate change.”
In addition to helping with its annual reporting obligations, Liberty has also commissioned Carbon Calculated to conduct an “Interpretation Report” that provides its executives and stakeholders with a detailed analysis of their company’s carbon footprint. It also examines areas for improvement in future reporting, as well as advising on targets and providing a comparative platform to benchmark against industry peers. The “Interpretation Report” includes a detailed overview of the current South African carbon landscape, focusing on areas such as CDP reporting requirements, target setting and carbon tax information.
These exercises have allowed Liberty to move beyond carbon footprint as being only a “tick-in-a-box” exercise within its general requirements for sustainability reporting. Liberty is now using carbon as a tool to highlight awareness and management of its buildings, in doing so, recognising the impacts that climate change will place on its operations as a business.
As Brandon concludes: “We need to change the way we do business. It’s no longer only about how much money Liberty makes but more importantly how we make our money and how we contribute to improving society.”
-Nici Palmer, Founding Member of Carbon Calculated, nici@carboncalculated.co.za