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Who’s pushing a green agenda in Copenhagen? Business, that’s who
Greener Working.com ^ | 12/16/09 | Tom Guay

Posted on 12/17/2009 3:11:39 PM PST by greatplains

Brace yourselves for the really big news coming out of the Copenhagen conference. It’ll be your corporate customers that force you to address climate change, not EPA or Congress.

Yes, EPA will regulate the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, mostly coal-fired power plants and large industrial facilities that release more than 25,000 metric tons a year of those global warming bad guys.

But that doesn’t mean smaller companies are off the hook, not at all.

The challenge ahead for small businesses will come from your big corporate customers — from auto makers, food and beverage companies, electronics manufacturers, and giant big-box retailers. They’re counting on you to cut your direct and indirect GHG emissions so they can claim credits for reducing their corporate carbon footprints.

Wal-Mart’s already made waves with its plan to create a Sustainability Index to rate the greeniness of all the products it sells. But other companies are also planning to green their supply chains.

For example, Coca-Cola’s announced this bombshell at the Copenhagen conference: It will reduce its own corporate carbon footprint by requiring Coca-Cola suppliers to reduce their GHG emissions. This means suppliers will have to account for their GHG emissions created during manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal of the products they sell to Coca-Cola.

The company was one of many corporations hosting booths in Copenhagen urging conference delegates to come up with an agreement that commits every country, and therefore every company, to reduce their GHG emissions, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The paper reports that the companies went to Copenhagen to call for huge investments in clean, renewable power from solar and wind power to offset the rising costs of coal-fired electricity.

This comes as Coca-Cola’s UK operations and Unilever both warned that failure to put a cap on emissions will put a huge dent in their profits. The U.K’s Telegraph reports that the two companies will avoid this by significantly reducing their GHG emissions.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is doing what it can to reduce its direct GHG emissions.

It plans to stop using GHG refrigerants in its nine million vending machines around the world. The company says it will eliminate 100% of vending-machine GHG emissions by switching to hydrofluorocarbon-free refrigerants by 2015.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: carbonfootprint; cocacola; supplychainghgs; unilever
One of the comments to this article refers to the whole mess as a "shell game". I think I agree.
1 posted on 12/17/2009 3:11:40 PM PST by greatplains
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To: greatplains

Chicago Climate Exchange member list. (I suspect there are many many more)

http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=64


2 posted on 12/17/2009 3:14:06 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: greatplains

Any, repeat, ANY product or firm that cites, mentions or purports GREEN in their mantra is one that I will boycott.


3 posted on 12/17/2009 3:16:47 PM PST by Gaffer
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To: Gaffer

Honestly it looks like pretty much all of them are on board.


4 posted on 12/17/2009 3:20:25 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: greatplains

The tide will turn when companies realize “green” is a scam...


5 posted on 12/17/2009 3:21:01 PM PST by GOPJ (Journalists as BaghdadBobLite - Global Warming Scientists as ElmerGantry - what's happening?)
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To: Gaffer

I stopped buying GE quite a while ago. Jeff Immelt is a fraud and a cheat plus he is a putz. Have you seen the shareholder decline there? Don’t even think of buying GM or Chrysler with how Obummer defrauded us and gave the UAW a sweetheart deal.


6 posted on 12/17/2009 3:21:06 PM PST by dumpthelibs (dumpthelibs)
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To: cripplecreek

Well, I just guess my consumerism list just got very, very small...Regardless, I’m not gonna put my money into a company that jumps on this bandwagon....never.


7 posted on 12/17/2009 3:22:32 PM PST by Gaffer
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To: greatplains
refers to the whole mess as a "shell game". I think I agree.

I was thinking more of "a cluster f***"

8 posted on 12/17/2009 3:24:29 PM PST by Las Vegas Ron (Oath keepers + The NRA = FReeRepublic (.com baby))
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To: Las Vegas Ron

lol! Probably the more accurate description...


9 posted on 12/17/2009 3:25:24 PM PST by greatplains
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To: GOPJ

They know its a scam and they know its a scam that makes them money for nothing.


10 posted on 12/17/2009 3:37:45 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: greatplains

“For example, Coca-Cola’s announced this bombshell at the Copenhagen conference: It will reduce its own corporate carbon footprint by requiring Coca-Cola suppliers to reduce their GHG emissions. This means suppliers will have to account for their GHG emissions created during manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal of the products they sell to Coca-Cola.’

Of course, they are not refering to countries that are ignoring carbon footprints.


11 posted on 12/17/2009 3:50:02 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote; then find me a real conservative to vote for)
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To: freekitty

Yep, outsource production to somewhere else and collect carbon credits on closed production facilities here.


12 posted on 12/17/2009 3:54:27 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: greatplains; cripplecreek
There might be one unintended good side-effect to all of this:

If things can be manufactured here with a lower carbon footprint than in foreign countries with laxer environmental controls, then we might get some of our manufacturing base back.

But of course the Chinese will lie and we will get the worst of all possible worlds: fewer jobs here, and more pollution there.

13 posted on 12/17/2009 3:59:36 PM PST by who_would_fardels_bear (These fragments I have shored against my ruins)
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To: greatplains; IrishCatholic; Darnright; Entrepreneur; livius; DollyCali; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

14 posted on 12/17/2009 4:31:01 PM PST by steelyourfaith (Time to prosecute Al Gore now that fellow scam artist Bernie Madoff is in stir.)
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To: Gaffer

>> Any, repeat, ANY product or firm that cites, mentions or purports GREEN in their mantra is one that I will boycott.

You won’t be buying much, will you? :-)

But on a serious note: what will stop “green” business cold in its tracks is when there’s no perceived profit in Green. Until that day... well, business is business.

Fortunately, I think that day is coming. Keep in mind that marketing campaigns and corporate strategy lag real-time events.


15 posted on 12/17/2009 4:40:37 PM PST by Nervous Tick (Stop dissing drunken sailors! At least they spend their OWN money.)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear
But of course the Chinese will lie and we will get the worst of all possible worlds: fewer jobs here, and more pollution there.

I have seen a term being kicked around to describe the phenomenon you speak of.

"Carbon leakage".

16 posted on 12/17/2009 4:43:47 PM PST by Nervous Tick (Stop dissing drunken sailors! At least they spend their OWN money.)
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