Measuring Green
We went to an industry forum not long ago and heard a CEO of a major company say that his company’s goal was to “reduce our carbon emissions by 50% in five years.” Being good software nerds, we asked ourselves, “How would he know?”
To date, business software has typically measured things, people, or money. Why not carbon dioxide? Traditionally, we compared production alternatives based on time, cost, and quality. Why not pollution? Would it be useful to know that Manufacturing Method A produces more sulfur dioxide than Method B? Shouldn’t that be part of the decision matrix?
We think so. So we’ve started an initiative on Corporate Social Responsibility. We began by commissioning AMR Research to do a market study for us in Europe and America. It turns out that companies on both sides of the Atlantic want to measure their environmental footprints and reduce them. (Click here to see the results of the AMR study). They also want to ensure that they’re complying with fair labor practices and ethical sourcing standards.
The problem is that they don’t have software to measure their progress or demonstrate their compliance. Aye, there’s the rub. We don’t have the solution yet but we’re working with customers to define it. As Kermit the Frog says, “It’s not easy being green”. But if you’d like to be green, we’d like to help.
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