Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Measuring Up To Carbon Neutrality

Meeting Peter Frost last week really has me excited to become Carbon Neutral. I announced our intentions to our staff Monday and there were resounding cheers of approval.

Over the weekend I spent a fair amount of time learning about CO2 emissions, Global Warming, Carbon Footprints and how Costless Express can become a Carbon Neutral company.

The CarbonNeutral CompanyYesterday I connected with THE CARBON NEUTRAL COMPANY in London. The call didn’t start out as smoothly as I was expecting. They immediately interviewed me for about 20 minutes to gauge our commitment level. There are only about 1000 companies currently that are Carbon Neutral Certified and can adhere to the strict yearly guidelines.

Gladly, Costless Express was already doing a lot of the right things, and our value proposition to our customers of single sourcing was quite interesting to them. “If your customer can have all their supplies delivered with just one order, that really saves on the amount of trucks on the road and the emissions they would produce. We like that.” was their response.

To move forward, we will need to submit a full assessment and detailed report of our Green House Gas Emissions. I will need to hire an independent science partner to advise and measure Costless Express’ yearly carbon output. There are only about 3 companies in the world authorized to do this report. They will advise us of our emissions, create emissions reduction programs and submit their report to The Carbon Neutral Company for consideration of becoming Certified Carbon Neutral. There are some significant costs and time commitments at this stage. No turning back now!

I’ll be keeping everyone updated to the progress.

Please visit http://www.carbonneutral.com/ to learn about our environment and how everyone can make a difference – we only have one planet, lets take care of it.

Calvin

Monday, November 12, 2007

Costless Express is Going Carbon Neutral!

Last week I was in Toronto on business and met a very interesting person named Peter Frost. He was a guest speaker at the conference I was attending and is world renowned for his forward thinking on educating businesses about social responsibility and the environment.

Since I could not stay for his presentation the next morning I invited him to dinner with my controller Darrin and another business owner. We were all very interested to hear what he had to say and we weren’t disappointed. Peter spent over four hours discussing how our company can make a difference in the global environment by managing our Carbon Footprint and offsetting our CO2 emissions. Peter was amazing and his ideas have given Costless Express an exciting direction for the future.

Carbon FootprintI have always managed Costless Express with environmental sensitivity. We use plastic totes instead of boxes, recycle, 50% of our staff take public transit, we use and sell recycled products and on and on. What I found out is that there is so much more we could be doing to reduce our company’s impact on the environment. Peter was excited about our single source concept where we can offer our customers ALL their supplies in one delivery. You see, our truck can deliver what it could take ten other suppliers to deliver and this reduces the carbon footprint of that customers order, causes less traffic congestion and less emission. Our customers need only order from us and we are helping the environment. That was nice to hear from him but he suggested we really push ourselves as a company and strive for the top company ranking of being a CARBON NEUTRAL COMPANY.

I made a commitment at the dinner table that Costless Express will become a Carbon Neutral Company by April 22, 2008 – Earth Day.

Now it’s time to see what I’m in for!

Calvin

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Our New Items For 2008!

This is my favorite time of year at Costless Express. Our 2008 Catalogue is completed and off to the presses. Now, it's time to bring in all the new and exciting items for our catalogue launch!

Just last week, we had our coffee and tea shipments arrive. It was Christmas a bit early for me as I went to the warehouse to see the shipments arrive. It was satisfying to see the product cycle complete. From finding a supplier, negotiating prices, adding the products to the catalogue and receiving our first shipment—all that's left to do is ship the new items out to customers.

I know our customers will enjoy our new 2008 Catalogue. We listened to our customers' feedback and added some exciting new items and categories, such as:

  • More healthy snack choices Healthy Choices icon
  • More environmentally friendly items Eco icon
  • More Buy More & Save pricing Buy More & Save
  • Focus pages on your favorite items like Starbucks, Tazo, Stash and more
  • Free hand soap and Purell dispensers
  • Health and Wellness program
  • Over 4500 new items

I'm excited to show all our customers our new catalogue and products. Keep an eye on our website: we'll add new items online before the catalogues arrive!

Calvin