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With a federal administration that has been extremely reluctant to take any green action, it's at least gratifying that some US businesses are taking the issue into their own hands. According to the State of Green Business report, 2007 was a bumper year for green issues among US businesses. But behind the announcements and PR bluster, the report says that US businesses are not doing enough, and are failing on the key metric of cutting their overall carbon emissions quickly enough.
The report does acknowledge some positive actions, however. For example, some US companies made some pretty impressive commitments in 2007 to going green. Nike said it would become "climate-neutral" by 2015 in all of its facilities, and has signed up to the WWF Climate Savers program. It has already taken steps, like building an entirely wind-powered distribution centre in Belgium.
And US power company Green Mountain Power Corp said that it was already nearing zero-carbon status, with only two per cent carbon-emitting fuel in its energy mix.
Commitments are all very well and good but without a consistent way of measuring carbon emissions in a company they are worth little. A third of US companies have no way of measuring the carbon emissions they make themselves, and only a tenth pay any attention to their emissions across the whole supply chain.
Green transport is also finally starting to make an impact in the land of the hummer, with consumers and fleet buyers turning away from gas guzzlers. Enterprise Rent- A-Car announced its plans to be the green leader in the car hire industry, with initiatives to use more fuel efficient cars -- there is increasing interest in hybrid and electric cars -- and to invest in alternative fuel research. Unfortunately, in the US this often means ethanol produced from corn, which has itself met criticism from the enviros.
The green business report attempts to gather all of these disparate issues together and report on how US businesses are performing. It has created an index of 20 environmental issues including alternative-fuel vehicles, carbon intensity, corporate reporting, packaging and toxic waste.
Overall it seems that some progress is being made, with only two areas seeing a worsening situation: carbon intensity and e-waste. Even so, State of Green Business fears that too many US businesses are doing too little too late.
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