For Dell, going carbon neutral means outsourcing the dirty work

Al Gore has been busy for the last several years with the debut of Inconvenient Truth and winning a Nobel peace prize. His message has made its way to larger companies like Dell, who are seeking to reduce their carbon footprint in the world. Considering the number of computers Dell manufactures on a daily basis, a significant overhaul of businesses processes would make sense. Instead, Dell is paying someone else to deal with the problem without changing it’s overall approach to business.

Dell claims that it is already carbon neutral, but it achieved that milestone largely by purchasing renewable energy credits, according to the Wall Street Journal. That means the company itself isn’t doing much to reduce how much carbon it’s generating in the environment.

Instead, the money it invests in renewable energy credits is used to fund initiatives like building wind turbine farms.

But what goes into calculating a carbon footprint? That’s debatable, and every company can calculate it differently. Dell has decided to include things like electricity used in its buildings, boilers, and emissions generated by company-owned cars. It doesn’t include oil used by Dell suppliers to build parts, or the jet fuel used to transport products to consumers.

It’s an area ripe for development of a new standard, and in fact there’s as least one such project already underway. Right now it’s all voluntary. Thankfully it’s still cool to be green so maybe the positive marketing buzz is enough to draw some companies in.

Dell is doing a good thing by pioneering in this space and because of that it deserves some respect. But, the impact of running more traditional business models has a long tail of environmental effects. The extended carbon footprint Dell evidences is just one example. To realize true change in how much we’re affecting the environment, businesses must be ready to make changes within their organization, not just push out cash to other organizations who are developing renewable energy.