Our Carbon Footprint

RDCL has monitored its emissions and estimated the company carbon foot print as part of the journey to sustainability.

Per full time employee (FTE) RDCL’s carbon footprint (July 2009 – June 2010) is estimated at 4.8 tCO2 totaling to 30tCO2.

Our carbon footprint is dominated by air and road travel. This is based on miles traveled by air and estimated vehicle efficiency and fuel consumption.  We will focus on reducing travel through awareness, improved planning and choosing appropriate vehicles.

Office electricity consumption has seen a natural increase since we doubled our office space, but per full time employee and per unit area our consumption is decreasing. The decrease in electricity is a result of a large number of employees working on projects out of the office environment for extended periods of time. We aim to maintain the reduction in electricity emissions during periods when more employees are office based.

We dispose of one bag of waste to landfill per month making a negligible contribution to our carbon footprint. All organic waste is composted in worm bins and the majority of the remaining waste products are recycled. The aim is to maintain our performance and reduce paper usage.

Looking ahead, our vision for the year to come is to:

• improve and add emissions performance indicators, and

• offset the carbon emissions we are unable to reduce at this stage.

We will aim to gain carbon neutral verification by the end of the financial year.

We have applied emission factors most recently released by the Ministry for the Environment (2009). Emission factors are commonly used to convert direct source emissions to equivalent tCO2. The footprint in terms of waste, electricity and vehicle transport is currently limited to the Havelock North office and does not include employees and their emission sources elsewhere.