Chamber Spotlight: Green Business Alliance

The Community Climate Collaborative (C3) is a local non-profit with a singular driving force: the belief that citizens, businesses, and local governments have the power to take action, implement policy, and reduce emissions right here at home. C3 catalyzes climate action at the community level through collaboration, programs, and advocacy which directly reduce climate pollution and elevate the climate leadership of Virginia communities.

On the business side, one of C3’s most important programs is a growing group of organizations called the Green Business Alliance (GBA). The GBA is a group of sixteen (and counting) climate-minded employers headquartered in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area.

These organizations are diverse in just about every way, with a wide variety in mission, scope, and workforce. Despite their differences, they have banded together with one common goal: to raise awareness for sustainability and to help mitigate climate change by taking action to reduce their collective carbon footprint.

Last spring, GBA representatives pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2025. This target matches the reduction goals set by the City and County governments in half the time, setting the GBA on course to be true local climate leaders. In addition to the group goal, each company has its own individual emissions target.

Coles Jennings, C3’s Director of Corporate Sustainability, has the honor of working with each one of these companies to map their carbon footprint and develop solutions for meeting their goals. This spring, with all of their 2021 data collected, C3 announced that the GBA has reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 28% below baseline, meaning they are nearly two thirds of the way towards their target! This has certainly been cause for celebration among the group, yet there is an understanding that there’s a lot of work yet to be done.

C3 continues to recruit new businesses to join the GBA, with the goal of adding a second cohort by the end of the year. This second cohort will have its own emissions reduction goals that C3 will help facilitate, and will combine forces with current GBA members to continue to grow the voice of the local green business community.

C3 is hoping to continue the theme of diversity with respect to industry, size, and corporate culture. This really helps strengthen the GBA mission and make sure a variety of perspectives are at the table.

C3’s vision for the GBA is that, by taking direct action, the collective voice of this group will become increasingly potent, not only at the local level, but in the state house as well.

Businesses and nonprofit organizations interested in joining the Green Business Alliance can contact Coles Jennings at coles@theclimatecollaborative.org.