The environmental impact of businesses

Can you explain to us what SAMI is?

SAMI is a solution that allows companies to engage in their climate strategy. To support companies in their climate approach in several phases.

• A first diagnostic phase for which the carbon balance tool, the carbon balance methodology, is mainly used.
• A second phase of action plan based on this diagnosis, implementing actions to reduce this impact.

And after another specificity of SAMI it is the double positioning so we are at the same time a software, a SaaS platform, and at the same time a human support.

I am a carbon expert, so in addition to the software, I support companies through meetings etc. to set up and make diagnoses.

there are always several choices to calculate the same emission station, several calculations are possible. The role of the expert of the expert will therefore be to choose the best method by arbitrating between two parameters:

• Precision by anticipating the action plan phase. The more specific you are, the better you can manage the action plan and measure the impact of your actions.
• The collection time according to the information that is available from the customer and also on his very concrete availability.
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What phase of this process are you involved in?
When it comes to VSEs/SMEs, it often happens that we reach customers who do not have a CSR department at all, who are very poorly structured on this subject. And so the carbon footprint tool is very interesting because it allows you to structure yourself from the start, to identify what the environmental challenges are, and then, by the way, to push for actions. We really come as a source of ideas. Knowing that it is still the environmental issue alone, that of course does not include all the pillars, it is mainly the climate issue.

And then there is another case where when we are on companies that are already quite mature on the subject. When we are on SMEs, they sometimes have already done one or two carbon assessments before calling on us, and now the carbon balance confirms or invalidates the trajectory taken and the actions taken. Perhaps the priority had been put too much on an action that ultimately has quite little impact, we are redirecting the action plan according to that.‍

Do you have examples of companies that reduced their environmental impact in 2022?

‍On product companies, the typology of the bulk of emissions comes from purchases and the manufacture of the products that are sold, and therefore the action plan focuses mainly on its products, so here, for example, I am supporting a company called SIDAMO, which resells tools for building and industrial professionals. Now, during the second carbon assessment, this is the second assessment they are doing with SAMI. We were able to see a decrease of 4% in their absolute balance, therefore 4% less in emissions in one year. This is in particular the fact of an action plan that they have begun to implement to re-locate the production of their machines in France. As a result, this is mainly less carbon intensive. Before, there was a lot of production in Asia. In France, there is a carbon intensity in kg of CO2 per kWh that is much lower than in Asia, which makes it possible to decarbonize and also slightly reduce the share of emissions on transport. That is a first example.

Afterwards, we could also take an example service where the type of emissions is a bit different. For services, the bulk of emissions will be emissions related to employees. That is to say, travel, catering, to offices, to computer products, to digital technology. Here, for example, we support Canard&Co, which is a company that does communication. We have been with them for three years. They are quite model in this matter. and they were able to implement a lot of actions in each of the emission items that concern employees. For example, on the premises, in their offices, they have set up a heat pump that allows them to consume much less.They are also quite modern in terms of travel, they have completely stopped the plane, whether for their filming or for internal travel.They are also oriented towards a low-carbon offer, i.e. they are also oriented towards a low-carbon offer, i.e. they try to make their customers aware of the carbon footprint, but also the end consumers of video, by trying to communicate through low-carbon imaginaries, that is to say, for example, not to not praise speed, the individual car in communications. ‍

What are the first actions to take when you are an SME and are slowly taking an interest in this?‍

The first step is to make a diagnosis. Indeed, if you have no idea what the CSR strategy to adopt on your company would be, make a diagnosis to realize which subject to prioritize. And then there is also a second subject that must be started at the beginning, which is training, and finally awareness-raising. This is why many companies are setting up climate workshops or autumn workshops, for example, which will make it possible to raise awareness and engage employees, and which will also allow, once a diagnosis has been made, for everyone to also find actions that seem relevant to them and to have an eco-construction of the action plan with the employees as well. This allows us to be much more precise because typically there will be very precise actions depending on the organization of the company, according to the professions each. It also finally makes it possible to have a better implementation of the action plan, because we generally implement an action that we have found the idea of much better than an action that is imposed on us.

What we generally do is indeed, once we have finished the first carbon footprint diagnosis, the main emission items come out, and after on each of these items, we will propose a little bit the actions that seem most relevant to us. What we propose to the various companies is to launch these courses of action with employees, to see their support, and also to see if they have other more specific actions in mind, or if there are major obstacles that perhaps the BilanCarbone project managers would not have identified, and which finally allow us to be much more effective in terms of the action plan and to have a much greater impact later on.

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