The evidence is all around us that our climate is changing dramatically: floods,
hurricanes, droughts, scorching summers, melting glaciers and disappearing ice
shelves in the polar regions. The consensus among the scientific community is that
these trends are due to, at least in part, human activities—in particular, those
activities that release “greenhouse gases” causing global warming. These gases
are accumulating in our atmosphere and changing the intricate balance of biological
ecosystem that has sustained life on earth for millions of years.
Employees in an organisation think that there is little they can do to help at
their individual level. In fact, greenhouse gases (primarily CO2) are emitted
whenever and wherever fossil fuels are burned, such as in the cars we drive, in
our oil or gas burning furnaces, and in the thermal power generating stations that
produce electricity for industrial or residential purposes. When taken together,these “personal” sources account for about 35% of the total greenhouse gases
coming from a typical country, such as Canada.
Businesses in the manufacturing segment of the industry are a bigger source of
greenhouse gases than a typical organisation engaged in training programmes
and educational activities. However, these businesses produce products for an
employee to consume and the energy these businesses consume ends up “in” the
products that an employee purchases and utilises: cars, homes, toys, appliances,
food, etc. This is the “embodied energy” that an employee is responsible for, even
if he puts the car up on blocks or never turned on the air-conditioner. This
inherently implies that if an employee purchased fewer consumer products or
purchased the products available using their carbon footprints (intelligent purchase)
this would obviously result in less greenhouse gases emitted by manufacturing
and production businesses.
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