Fresh Science

Csilla Demeter – lead researcher, University of Queensland

The price of a cup of coffee can tell its carbon footprint story

Businesses are eager to help with the thorny problem of reducing carbon emissions, to put the brakes on climate change.

But working out the emissions caused by their business operations is difficult and very expensive.

Now there’s a fast, cheap and simple way to work out emissions for small business.

Researcher Csilla Demeter and colleagues at The University of Queensland have shown that using simple business cost information to get a good estimate of their carbon emissions, making it unnecessary to use expensive and complicated traditional estimation methods.

75% of emissions are caused before a business even starts value-adding.

“This cost-based approach is a vital simplifying first step to achieving net zero. It will help businesses to reduce emissions and it will save them costs,” says Ms Demeter.

“This simple and affordable method empowers small and medium enterprises to take the first step in understanding, managing and reducing their carbon emissions,” says Dr Ya-Yen Sun of The University of Queensland.

Csilla Demeter works with colleagues including Professor Sara Dolnicar and Dr. Ya-Yen Sun.