I want to know my company's footprint

If you want to run an environmentally-friendly business, it may be useful to know how your products or services impact the outside world.

You could, for example, assess your company's impact on the environment or the local community in different phases – from the extraction of raw materials to the disposal of waste.

All companies impact the environment
All companies have an environmental impact. This might be from their factories, company cars, waste, heating – the list goes on.

If it might help your company to know more about your environmental footprint, you could perform an environmental impact assessment.

Working environment assessment
You could also look at how your business impacts your employees' health and safety by assessing their working environment.

As a sustainable business, you could even extend this assessment to include your suppliers or the users of your product.

An insight into your business's impact on the outside world can be a good starting point for innovation. It can give you a reason to ask how your company can do things better.

You can draw inspiration from the environmental and social standards developed by International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group. Among other things, IFC offers support for companies investing in developing countries.