Carbon Emissions

Carbon emissions refers to human activities that cause carbon dioxide (CO2) to be released into the atmosphere. This results from the burning of fossil fuels, which in most businesses occurs in manufacturing of goods, transportation, and energy required to construct and operate buildings, among others. It is categorized as one of the greenhouse gasses (GhG) that contribute to global warming.

Carbon Footprint

Your carbon footprint is another way of looking at the total carbon emissions your company releases into the atmosphere – your “footprint.” Once you measure your footprint, you can then determine strategies for reducing or offsetting it. For instance, commuting to work via your personal car or the electricity required to light and heat your office are contributors to your carbon footprint.

Carbon Negative

If your company is “Carbon Negative,” this means you emit less than zero carbon emissions. This simply means that your company draws excess carbon from the atmosphere beyond the amount it produces, which is typically accomplished through a mixture of strategies including, carbon capture, sequestering carbon, and avoidance of carbon generation in the first place.

Carbon Neutral

“Carbon Neutral” means that your company has achieved equilibrium in its operations: zero net carbon emissions into the environment. For most companies this is usually achieved by reducing your direct carbon emissions and by purchasing carbon credits to get to a neutral state.

Certified B Corporation

Often confused with Benefit Corporation, a Certified B Corporation is a company that has successfully passed the B Impact Assessment measuring its social and environmental impact performance.

DEI

DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” This is the practice of acknowledging, accepting, and supporting people of all racial, sexual, gender, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

In-Kind

In-Kind is a non-cash donation where your company contributes the products it makes or the professional services it provides to a non-profit organization. This is typically measured by the wholesale (cost) value of your products or the customary hourly rate for your services.

LGBTQ

This stands for belonging to the classification of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer. It is often expanded to LGBTQ+, the plus sign intended to be inclusive of additional sexual identities.

Life-Cycle Analysis

Also known as a “Life-Cycle Assessment,” this is a method to calculate the complete environmental impact of a human-created commercial product, process, or service. This includes sourcing of raw materials, transportation, manufacturing, distribution, and end-of-life disposal.

Living Wage

A Living Wage is the amount required to cover the necessities of “living”: health care, shelter, food, and childcare. This varies greatly by geographic location.

Low-Income Community

Low-income communities are census tracts where the poverty rate is greater than 20% of the population or in more rural communities where the median family income is at or below 80% of the state’s median income. (A census tract is roughly equivalent to a neighborhood with a population of roughly 1,200 to 8,000.)

Nonbinary

In the context of sexual identity, nonbinary is a term for gender identities that are not solely female or male, heterosexual or homosexual.

Public Benefit Corporation

Also known in some states as a “Benefit Corporation, this is a legal structure that allows companies to give social and environmental impact equal consideration along with financial profitability in the operation of their businesses. It requires companies to produce an annual benefit report (also referred to as an “impact report” that details and impact they have created during the prior year. Public Benefit Corporations must use a third-party standard to validate the public benefit they are creating.

Remote/Virtual/Hybrid Work

What once was known as “virtual work” is now more commonly referred to as remote work. This is when an employee works offsite at their home, a co-working space, or perhaps even a coffee shop. Hybrid work refers to a combination of working offsite and onsite.

Third-Party Standard

In the context of impact measurement and reporting, a third-party standard is a framework developed for measuring corporate social and environmental impact that is administered by an independent body. Examples of this are B Lab, GRI, and Benefit Corporations for Good.

Underrepresented Ethnicity

This refers to an ethnic group whose representation is disproportionately low compared to its percentage of the general population.

Waste Audit

This is a process to determine the type and amounts of waste your company produces.