Key takeaways
- Major companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, and Nike have all made public net-zero or carbon-neutral pledges, though several have seen emissions rise since setting those targets, mainly due to AI and data center growth.
- The most effective strategies start with energy use and transportation, the two largest sources of emissions for most businesses.
- Renewable energy certificates (RECs) let businesses offset electricity use without installing on-site generation.
- Simple operational changes, thermostat settings, recycling programs, paper reduction, can meaningfully cut emissions and costs together.
- Carbon offsets are the practical tool for addressing whatever emissions remain after efficiency and clean-energy measures are exhausted.
In this guide
- Establish clear goals
- Make sustainable long-term changes
- Measure your progress
- Buy renewable energy and RECs
- Minimize single-use plastics
- Reduce and offset travel emissions
- Make recycling the new normal
- Optimize heating and cooling
- Create a paper-free environment
- Offset your remaining emissions
Corporate Climate Pledges in 2026: Where Things Stand
It’s worth checking in on how the big corporate commitments referenced throughout this space are actually tracking, since pledges and results don’t always move together.
2026 corporate climate commitment snapshot
- Amazon: Still committed to net-zero by 2040 through the Climate Pledge it co-founded in 2019, but its carbon footprint has risen a cumulative 58% since that baseline year, up 16% in 2025 alone, driven largely by data center and cloud computing growth.
- Google: Remains committed to net-zero by 2030, despite its overall greenhouse gas emissions climbing roughly 51% since its 2019 baseline, also largely tied to AI-driven data center expansion.
- Apple: Continues pursuing its goal of a carbon-neutral supply chain and products by 2030, including supplier clean-energy programs run jointly with partners like Nike.
- Nike: Set a net-zero target for 2050 under its Move to Zero initiative, with interim 2030 goals to cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions 65% and Scope 3 emissions 30%; the company reports a 69% cut to its Scope 1 and 2 emissions between 2020 and 2023.
- Meta: Has committed to net-zero emissions across its full value chain by 2030.
The honest takeaway: these pledges are real and companies are investing heavily in clean energy to hit them, but rising demand, especially from AI infrastructure, has made several of these targets harder to reach than expected. That’s a useful reminder for any business setting its own goals: build in room for growth, and treat efficiency and offsetting as ongoing practices rather than a one-time fix.
10 Strategies at a Glance
Before diving into the details, here’s a quick reference for where each strategy fits in terms of effort and typical payoff, so you can prioritize based on your team’s bandwidth.
| Strategy | Typical effort | Where the impact comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Establish clear goals | Low | Focuses resources on your biggest emission sources first |
| 2. Sustainable long-term changes | Low | Prevents backsliding after initial progress |
| 3. Measure your progress | Low-Medium | Keeps teams accountable and catches issues early |
| 4. Buy renewable energy and RECs | Medium-High | Usually the single largest emissions cut available |
| 5. Minimize single-use plastics | Low-Medium | Cuts upstream emissions from production and disposal |
| 6. Reduce and offset travel | Medium | Targets a major, visible source for many businesses |
| 7. Make recycling the new normal | Low-Medium | Cuts methane from landfill waste |
| 8. Optimize heating and cooling | Low | Fast payback, often 10%+ energy savings alone |
| 9. Create a paper-free environment | Low | Small per-unit impact, but compounds across an office |
| 10. Offset your remaining emissions | Low | Addresses what efficiency measures can’t eliminate |
1. Establish Clear Goals
Apple CEO Tim Cook has described sustainability as a shared opportunity for businesses to help shape a better future for the planet. When you set out to reduce your emissions, it’s essential to identify exactly what you want to achieve, what measures need to be taken, and a realistic timeline for your action plan. For many businesses, particularly larger ones, it’s often most effective to focus on improving one area at a time, rather than trying to make several big changes all at once.
The starting points for many companies are energy use and transportation, two of the more prominent sources of carbon emissions. You can assess these two areas of your business, collect data about your corporate impact, decide on strategies to reduce your footprint, and then set a clear timeline over which you can achieve the goal. It’s important to remember that as much as every business wants dramatic results overnight, it takes time, commitment, and a long-term vision. Once your company establishes clear goals, every step forward has a positive impact on the environment.
2. Make Sustainable Long-Term Changes
It’s also critical to make changes that your business can sustain over the long term. Reducing your carbon footprint shouldn’t feel like a “crash diet” with behavior that returns to normal after the goal is achieved. Instead, it’s a chance to re-think and improve how you do business, which is ultimately much better for your company, your employees, your customers, and your bottom line. And perhaps most importantly, cutting your carbon footprint shouldn’t feel like an obstacle or a chore, but rather a means to make genuine changes that show a commitment to sustainability that your customers will value and others will follow.
3. Measure Your Progress
Management theorist Peter Drucker is widely credited with the idea that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” The most effective way to reach any goal is to carefully monitor and record your progress along the way. Tracking results is a great way not only to ensure you’re heading in the right direction, but also to create extra motivation and encourage greater levels of teamwork.
Once your business implements a carbon-reduction strategy, you can designate particular goals to team leaders or departments, and then encourage members of each team to measure and compare progress. If you have multiple employees or departments working on the same objective, you can even offer incentives to encourage friendly competition, and reward those who achieve the highest results. If your carbon reduction strategy is made public, be sure to promote your results and new goals as well, and use the accountability to generate further action.
4. Buy Renewable Energy and RECs
One of the fastest and most definitive ways a company can reduce its carbon footprint is to power its business activities with renewable energy. And luckily, there are several different ways to make the switch. With falling solar costs in the US, the price of installing a solar energy system is lower than it used to be. With suitable roof space, you can install an on-site renewable energy system that offsets some or even all of your entire energy demand. Coupled with the emergence of battery storage technology, it’s now possible for businesses to run on clean solar energy around the clock.
Another option is to purchase renewable energy directly from your electricity company, or enter into a corporate power purchase agreement to source clean energy from large-scale solar and wind farms. And finally, your business can also purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) tied to your electricity use. Each REC represents one megawatt-hour of clean energy, meaning that after reviewing your annual consumption, you can use RECs to support renewable generation matched to your usage and help accelerate the broader transition to sustainable energy.
5. Minimize Single-Use Plastics
Plastic pollution has become a very hot topic in recent years, with reports that so much plastic is entering our oceans it’s starting to form garbage islands. In addition, most plastic is made directly from oil and gas, and also creates CO2 emissions during its production, transport, and disposal. If your corporate goal is to reduce your footprint meaningfully, one of your key strategies should be to eliminate as much single-use plastic as possible, through smarter purchasing decisions and a focus on recycling and reusing existing materials. The carbon emissions associated with plastic may not be obvious, but they are significant. By taking steps to reduce your dependence on plastics, and working closely with your suppliers to develop better alternatives, you’ll quickly wonder why your business didn’t make the changes much sooner.
6. Reduce and Offset Your Travel Emissions
Video conferencing has become a normal part of business operations, allowing real-time collaboration between employees and teams regardless of location. If it’s not essential to physically travel to another site, try to use video calling instead, and encourage others to do the same. With the continued growth of electric vehicles, it’s also possible for businesses to lease or purchase fully-electric cars and vans to replace traditional gas and diesel models. Amazon has been one of the more visible examples of this shift, having ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans as part of its net-zero-by-2040 pledge; its global electric delivery fleet had grown to more than 31,000 vans as of recent reporting.
For business trips that require air travel, you can reduce emissions by booking direct flights, or investigating whether you can use high-speed rail instead. And in cases where it’s not possible to avoid flying, you can balance out the greenhouse gasses using carbon offsets to help counterbalance the emissions elsewhere.
7. Make Recycling the New Normal
While many businesses have recycling programs in place, there are still many items that are sent to landfills and release large volumes of methane, a greenhouse gas with roughly 84 times the warming power of CO2 over a 20-year period. If you want to increase your recycling rates and reduce your carbon footprint, consider these tips:
- Conduct employee training to educate staff about new initiatives and facilities.
- Install visible, clearly-labeled recycling bins in convenient locations.
- Start with paper and cardboard recycling, and gradually expand to other items, including plastics, glass, batteries, light bulbs, and metals.
- Refill toner and ink cartridges instead of throwing them away.
- Collect organic waste in kitchens and eating areas.
- Install refillable soap and toiletry containers in restrooms to avoid single-use waste.
- Work with e-waste companies in your local area to recycle computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices.
- Reduce the number of individual waste bins, reminding employees to recycle instead.
It’s estimated that around 90% of office waste can be recycled, provided there are the right systems in place. Most people want to see more recycling in their workplace, and once a business develops a culture of sustainability, it often quickly spreads to many other areas of the company.
8. Optimize Your Heating and Cooling
HVAC systems are the largest consumers of energy in many commercial buildings, so it’s worth paying close attention to your thermostat settings if you want to reduce carbon emissions, as well as your energy bills. According to the Department of Energy, turning down the thermostat by 7-10 degrees over an eight-hour period can reduce your energy consumption, and associated greenhouse gasses, by around 10%. Similarly, the cooling systems in server rooms and data centers, which are often hidden away and forgotten about, also significantly impact your energy consumption. Many thermostats are set to a constant 66 degrees but can comfortably run at 71-73 instead, which won’t negatively affect your equipment but will lower your energy consumption. It’s always best to consult your IT professional or equipment manufacturers for specific advice.
9. Create a Paper-Free Environment
With the advent of the internet and the popularity of portable devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops, most offices use far less paper than they used to. But there are still many that chew through multiple reams of paper every week, much of which is entirely unnecessary. This unused paper is not just a drain on the environment; it also wastes a lot of money. As sustainability writer McKenzie Jones has put it, the ultimate goal of recycling programs should be preventing waste from happening in the first place, not just managing it after the fact.
It takes one tree to produce 16 reams of paper, which could have otherwise absorbed valuable CO2 from the atmosphere. If you want to reduce your paper consumption, there are a number of steps you can take:
- Reduce the number of printers in the office
- Use emails instead of writing paper memos and notes
- Have convenient and clearly-marked paper recycling bins around the workplace
- Digitize your existing paper filing system, and use cloud storage for new files
- In meetings, use laptops, phones, and tablets instead of pens and paper
- Change paper bills and statements over to email
- Set small, incremental goals, and measure the results
And in cases when you do purchase office paper, ensure that it’s 100% recycled, and have systems in place to recycle it again at the end of its use.
10. Offset Your Remaining Emissions
By following the steps above, making smarter choices, and developing a culture of sustainability, you can significantly reduce your environmental impact. But in cases where there are unavoidable emissions, you can also invest in carbon offsets to help balance your remaining CO2 footprint. At Terrapass, we partner with a number of carbon reduction projects throughout the US, enabling companies of all sizes to offset their emissions and set new standards in corporate responsibility.
It’s also important to remember that reducing greenhouse gasses is not an overnight fix; it’s an ongoing process. But once you set achievable goals, identify the actions you can take, and develop ways to measure your progress, you’ll quickly see tangible results that benefit not just your company, employees, and customers, but the entire climate.
How Long Does It Take a Business to Reduce Its Carbon Footprint?
There’s no fixed timeline, it depends heavily on company size, industry, and how much you’re able to invest upfront. That said, a rough pattern shows up across most businesses that take this seriously:
- 0-6 months: Measuring your baseline footprint, setting goals, and picking your first one or two strategies (usually energy and travel).
- 6-18 months: Implementing renewable energy purchases or on-site generation, since these typically involve contracts, installation, or procurement timelines.
- 1-3 years: Operational changes like recycling programs, paper reduction, and HVAC optimization become embedded as normal practice rather than a special initiative.
- Ongoing: Offsetting remaining emissions and refining your strategy as your business grows, since a static plan will drift out of date as headcount, facilities, or product lines change.
Even large companies with significant resources, as the 2026 corporate pledge data above shows, often take a decade or more to approach their targets, and rising demand can push timelines further out. Setting a realistic, staged plan beats an aggressive one you can’t sustain.
What’s the Cheapest Way for a Business to Reduce Its Carbon Footprint?
If budget is the binding constraint, prioritize in roughly this order:
- Behavioral and operational changes (thermostat settings, paper reduction, video conferencing instead of travel) cost little to nothing and can be implemented immediately.
- Recycling program improvements require mostly staff time and signage, not capital investment.
- Renewable energy certificates (RECs) are typically far less capital-intensive than on-site solar installation, since you’re purchasing certificates rather than hardware.
- Carbon offsets for your remaining footprint scale with the size of your business and let you address emissions you can’t yet eliminate directly, without the upfront cost of infrastructure changes.
On-site renewable generation and EV fleet transitions tend to be the most capital-intensive strategies on this list, but they also typically offer the largest long-term savings once the upfront cost is paid off.
FAQ: Reducing Your Business’s Carbon Footprint
Where should a business start when reducing its carbon footprint?
Energy use and transportation are typically the two largest sources of emissions for most businesses, so measuring and addressing those first tends to have the biggest impact.
What’s the fastest way for a business to cut emissions?
Switching to renewable energy, whether through on-site solar, a power purchase agreement, or renewable energy certificates (RECs), is generally the fastest and most direct lever available.
What’s the cheapest way for a business to cut emissions?
Behavioral and operational changes, like adjusting thermostats, cutting paper use, and replacing travel with video calls, cost the least and can start immediately, before you invest in bigger changes like renewable energy or fleet electrification.
How long does it take to significantly reduce a business’s carbon footprint?
Most businesses see meaningful progress within 1-3 years of sustained effort, though full transitions, especially involving renewable energy contracts or fleet changes, commonly take longer. Even major companies with net-zero pledges typically plan over a decade or more.
Have major companies actually met their carbon-neutral pledges?
Progress is mixed. Companies like Amazon and Google remain committed to their net-zero targets, but both have seen overall emissions rise since setting those goals, mainly due to AI and data center growth outpacing their clean energy investments.
Can carbon offsets fully eliminate a business’s carbon footprint?
Offsets are best used to balance out emissions that are genuinely difficult to eliminate directly, after efficiency measures and clean energy have already reduced the footprint as much as practically possible.
How much can simple changes like thermostat settings actually save?
Turning down the thermostat by 7-10 degrees over an eight-hour period can cut energy consumption, and the associated emissions, by around 10%, according to the Department of Energy.
What are renewable energy certificates (RECs) and how do they help?
Each REC represents one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity generated. Businesses purchase RECs matched to their electricity usage to support renewable energy generation and help move the broader grid toward cleaner sources.
Brought to you by terrapass.com
