The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) reported that there is a heightened awareness of sustainability issues within corporate America today, and many home furnishings companies are taking steps to assess their overall impact on the environment and calculate their carbon footprint.
The American Home Furnishings Alliance has introduced a new tool on its website, www.sustainablebydesign.us, that is designed to simplify those calculations and help companies compare their results against industry averages.
The AHFA Carbon Calculator was developed in partnership with Verisae, a sustainability resource-planning firm that helps companies measure, manage and reduce equipment and energy costs. Verisaes Carbon Calculator has been used in other industries to give manufacturers and retailers with a basic understanding of their carbon impact.
Verisae worked with AHFA Vice President Bill Perdue to customize the calculator and make it applicable for furniture manufacturers. The web-based tool allows companies to measure their carbon footprint, establish a baseline and find potential energy efficiency and emissions reduction opportunities that can save money. The calculator helps companies set goals and measure progress.
The AHFA Carbon Calculator will be available free through a link on www.sustainablebydesign.us beginning September 1. Companies do not need to be participants in AHFAs Sustainable by Design program to make use of the calculator.
In addition, companies that are not members of AHFA can access the calculator any time prior to October 1 by emailing bgrubb@ahfa.us and requesting a temporary user name and password.
The AHFA Carbon Calculator is a great starting point for companies that arent necessarily ready to take action, Perdue explains. It can give them a basic understanding of their environmental impact and provide some what-if scenarios to highlight the possible bottom-line cost savings associated with various energy reduction options.
Verisae will offer a webinar at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, August 31, to help companies understand how to use the Carbon Calculator. Register for the webinar from the AHFA EVENTS page at www.ahfa.us.
Verisae (www.verisae.com) has a variety of offerings within its Sustainability Resource Planning platforms that can help companies improve operational efficiency, ensure regulatory compliance and measure, manage and reduce their negative environmental impacts. As part of its partnership with AHFA, Verisae is offering member companies a 10 percent discount on all environmental management solutions and consulting services. In addition, members who enter their data in the Carbon Calculator by October 1 will receive customized data analysis from Verisae that ranks their company against their AHFA peers.
For more information, contact Jeff Phillips at jphillips@verisae.com.
The American Home Furnishings Alliance, based in High Point, N.C., is the largest association of home furnishings companies in the world and represents more than 200 leading furniture manufacturers and distributors, plus about 150 suppliers to the furniture industry worldwide.