Developing a Tool for Calculating the Carbon Footprint in SMEs

Abstract

The need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) has accelerated the adoption of circular economy (CE) practices. However, this has proved challenging for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who lack the financial, organizational, and informational capabilities to adopt circular business models. This paper highlights some of the SMEs’ challenges in adopting CE practices. It focuses on the need to calculate their carbon footprint (CF) by drawing on the literature examining the effect of information technologies (IT) on adopting CE strategies. This study aims to present a CF calculation tool used to calculate the CF of SMEs. The tool’s design is based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which assesses the environmental impact of a particular service or product over the different stages of its life cycle. The tool was tested in a small cheese factory in northern Greece, an SME representative of the country’s average SME. The production process was mapped, a GHG inventory was created, and the total emissions related to the production of a specific product were estimated. Our results show that adopting such CF calculation tools can have various implications regarding the organizational structure of SMEs, leading to cost reductions and reducing potential environmental impacts. The final aim is to test this tool at a large scale.