Heads Up! The small business carbon tracker is a copout

Yet another company is trying to enter the market with a green scheme. It is really no surprise; companies are coming up with products and tool kits to help other companies eradicate poor environmental decisions from the past centuries. All sorts of solutions, or so they call them, are getting attention and sweeping through the business-to-business market. Commonly, however, green strategists focus on big corporate companies. They bring renewable, sustainable options that offer a bandage to an even larger environmental wound. Now, trends are shifting towards small businesses, and companies are cashing in on the temporary band-aid.

According to the last US Census, America has over four million small businesses. Not to mention, Obama’s administration is looking to continue to grow small businesses by offering tax breaks and incentives. The market is primed for a small business green revolution, right?

Not for a cheap solution.

Rackspace, a web hosting firm, released a carbon footprint tracker as one of the many solutions aimed at small businesses. Along with the tracker, Rackspace anticipates offering online steps to reduce waste and increase efficiency. All this adds up to marketing plan that small businesses can use to claim they are green, but that is limited in impact.

For example, small businesses, with the help of Rackspace’s carbon tracker, will be able to acknowledge the amount of carbon they are emitting into the environment as a way of showing they are being conscious of the atmosphere. It is the same story that PepsiCo used with Tropicana. By making a few calculations, companies all of the sudden believe that they are doing more for sustainability. In reality, the tracker just acknowledges and affirms that the company is putting carbon into the environment.

To encourage action (once the tracker is used), Rackspace wants to provide plans for companies to offset their emissions by buying energy credits to bandage their carbon emissions statistics. The credits are meant to make companies feel like they are doing something for renewable energy. As many know, the credits do not require any sort of action on the part of the company purchasing the credits. They are essentially a tradeoff or payoff so that companies can continue their behavior and claim they are green. I know there are benefits of these credits, but they should only be used to supplement a company’s green efforts. They should not be used to offset their emissions.

The trickle effect of the carbon tracker on small businesses could be devastating. The result will be an onslaught of small businesses proclaiming their misleading green initiatives. Instead of these empty proclamations, small businesses should be encouraged to initiate green practices and initiatives that build sustainability while the company is still small. They should not settle for what major corporations are using as a copout. Let’s encourage small businesses to thrive in a green world by building it from the ground up on sustainable practices.