Understanding the carbon footprint of small businesses
For many small businesses, the idea of measuring and reducing carbon footprint can seem complex, expensive, or reserved for large corporations. Yet the reality is different. Today, tools are more accessible, methods are simpler, and customers increasingly expect clear, transparent climate action from the companies they buy from.
A carbon footprint represents the total greenhouse gas emissions linked to the activities of a business, expressed in CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e). This includes direct emissions, such as fuel burned on site, and indirect emissions, such as electricity use or suppliers’ activities. Understanding where emissions come from is the essential first step to reducing them in a concrete and measurable way.
Small businesses – from cafés and design agencies to craft workshops and tech startups – now have real leverage to act. By using simple indicators, choosing the right tools and prioritising realistic actions, they can reduce their environmental impact while also cutting costs and strengthening their brand image.
Why measuring your small business carbon footprint matters
Before trying to reduce emissions, it is critical to measure them. For a small organisation, a carbon footprint assessment is not just a sustainability KPI; it is a management tool that reveals hidden inefficiencies and financial waste.
Here are the main reasons why measuring your footprint is worth the effort:
- Cost savings: energy, heating, air conditioning, commuting and logistics are often major expenses. A carbon audit highlights where to cut both emissions and costs.
- Regulatory anticipation: climate-related reporting obligations are expanding. Small businesses that start early will be better prepared and more resilient.
- Competitive advantage: clients, especially B2B, increasingly require environmental data from their suppliers. Sharing a clear carbon reduction strategy can become a selection criterion.
- Employer brand: employees expect their workplace to align with their values. A structured, tangible approach to climate action can help attract and retain talent.
- Access to responsible finance: banks, investors and public programmes are integrating climate criteria. Having robust carbon metrics makes dialogue easier.
Key concepts: scopes and categories of emissions
To measure a small business carbon footprint in a robust, comparable way, most methodologies use the GHG Protocol and its three scopes:
- Scope 1: direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company. For example, fuel burned in company vehicles, gas heating in your building, on-site generators.
- Scope 2: indirect emissions from purchased energy. This is mostly electricity, steam, cooling or heating bought from a supplier.
- Scope 3: other indirect emissions throughout the value chain. This includes purchased goods and services, transport and distribution, business travel, employee commuting, waste and the use of sold products.
For a small business, Scope 3 often represents the majority of total emissions, especially for service companies and digital businesses. However, starting with Scope 1 and 2 can already bring valuable insights and immediate reduction opportunities.
How small businesses can measure their carbon footprint
Measuring a small business carbon footprint does not necessarily require a team of consultants. A structured, step-by-step approach, even with basic tools, can already deliver a solid initial estimate.
Step 1: Define the perimeter and reference year
The first decision is to set the organisational boundary and the timeframe:
- Include all legal entities you control, even informal ones (for example a side activity or a secondary office).
- Choose a reference year, typically the last full financial year, so you can compare results over time.
- Decide whether you start with Scope 1 and 2 only, or whether you integrate some key Scope 3 categories from the beginning, such as business travel or purchased goods.
For a first carbon assessment, it is often better to start simple, with reliable data, than to aim for exhaustive coverage and become stuck in complexity.
Step 2: Collect activity data
The core of a carbon footprint assessment is a set of measurable activity data. Typical examples for a small business include:
- Electricity consumption in kWh per site or office.
- Gas or fuel oil used for heating, in litres or kWh.
- Fuel consumption of company vehicles, or kilometres travelled per mode of transport.
- Number and distance of business trips (plane, train, car, taxi, ride-hailing).
- Employee commuting patterns (average distance, mode of transport, days per week).
- Purchases of goods and services, ideally by category (IT equipment, furniture, digital services, office supplies, catering, etc.).
- Waste volumes and types (paper, cardboard, electronic waste, mixed waste, organic waste).
Most of this information already exists in invoices, accounting software, travel booking tools and HR records. The challenge lies in centralising it in a spreadsheet or a dedicated carbon footprint tool.
Step 3: Use emission factors and tools
To convert activities into tonnes of CO₂e, you need emission factors. These are coefficients that indicate the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of activity: per kWh of electricity, per litre of fuel, per passenger-kilometre by plane, or per euro spent in a purchasing category.
Several options exist for small businesses:
- Online calculators: simple and often free tools designed for SMEs. They are perfect for a first estimate and to raise internal awareness.
- Specialised SaaS platforms: tools that connect to your accounting system or travel booking tools to automatically calculate your corporate carbon footprint. They provide dashboards and reduction scenario simulations.
- Expert consultants: useful if your activity is complex or regulated, or if you need to communicate externally with a high degree of methodological robustness.
Whatever the choice, the main objective is to obtain a consistent, replicable estimate each year, to track your carbon reduction strategy over time.
Step 4: Identify priority emission hotspots
Once the data is converted into tonnes of CO₂e, patterns will emerge. Rarely does everything weigh the same. For a small business, the biggest emission sources may be:
- Business travel (especially flights).
- Energy consumption in the office.
- Purchased goods and services (IT, software, cloud, marketing, catering).
- Digital infrastructure (servers, data centres, streaming).
- Transport of goods for product-based companies.
These “hotspots” become the foundation of a realistic action plan. Rather than trying to change everything at once, the company can focus on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of emissions.
Practical strategies to reduce small business carbon footprint
With a clear map of emissions, small businesses can implement targeted actions to reduce their carbon footprint in a concrete, measurable manner.
Reducing emissions from energy and buildings
Energy efficiency is often the quickest and most financially attractive lever:
- Migrate to renewable electricity contracts, ensuring they are certified and traceable.
- Upgrade lighting to LED, optimise heating and cooling settings, and install smart thermostats.
- Encourage employees to power down equipment at night and on weekends.
- In shared offices or co-working spaces, engage in dialogue with building managers to favour low-carbon solutions.
Even simple measures can significantly reduce both emissions and monthly bills, especially in energy-intensive premises.
Rethinking business travel and commuting
Travel is often a visible, sensitive part of a low-carbon business strategy. Instead of banning all trips, the objective is to question their necessity and favour cleaner alternatives.
- Adopt a “virtual by default” policy: videoconferencing is the standard, travel is the exception.
- Favour train over plane whenever possible, especially for domestic and short-haul routes.
- Encourage carpooling, cycling, and public transport for commuting, with subsidies or mobility budgets.
- Integrate clear rules in your travel policy: maximum flight distances, priority to economy class, and combined trips to reduce frequency.
These changes not only cut emissions, they also reduce travel-related fatigue and can improve work-life balance.
Making sustainable purchasing decisions
For many small businesses, especially in services, the largest share of their carbon footprint lies in purchased goods and services. Integrating sustainability criteria into procurement decisions can have a major impact.
- Choose refurbished or second-hand equipment when upgrading IT or furniture.
- Select suppliers with transparent environmental policies and measurable reduction targets.
- Review the need for physical marketing materials (flyers, merchandise) and prioritise digital alternatives.
- For product-based businesses, redesign packaging to minimise materials and favour recyclable or compostable options.
Over time, building a network of low-carbon suppliers strengthens the whole value chain and differentiates your company in the market.
Optimising digital and IT carbon footprint
The digital sector is often perceived as immaterial, yet its carbon footprint is far from negligible. Small businesses can act on both hardware and software.
- Extend the lifespan of laptops, phones and peripherals with proper maintenance and repairs.
- Choose cloud providers that disclose their energy mix and commit to renewable energy.
- Optimise websites and apps to be lighter, reducing data transfer and server load.
- Implement policies for responsible printing and digital storage, regularly cleaning unused data.
These actions contribute to a more responsible digital strategy, while also improving performance and user experience.
Engaging employees and integrating carbon reduction into culture
No corporate carbon reduction plan can succeed without employee engagement. For small businesses, this is an opportunity to mobilise teams around a shared project.
- Share the results of the carbon assessment in a transparent, accessible way.
- Organise workshops to co-create the climate action roadmap and gather practical ideas from daily experience.
- Define a few simple indicators and track them regularly: emissions per employee, per client, or per unit of turnover.
- Integrate climate objectives into internal policies, onboarding and annual reviews where relevant.
By making progress visible and celebrating milestones, the company builds a culture where environmental responsibility is part of everyday decision-making, not an isolated project.
From measurement to continuous improvement
Measuring and reducing a small business carbon footprint is not a one-off exercise. It is a continuous process that evolves with the organisation, its markets and its technologies. Each year, data becomes more reliable, targets more ambitious and actions more integrated into the business model.
By starting with a clear perimeter, robust measurement tools and a focus on high-impact levers, small companies can move from intention to action. They not only contribute to climate mitigation but also build more efficient, resilient and attractive organisations – aligned with the expectations of their customers, partners and teams.