For the past two years, Nikhil Arora has been working hard to cut his organic gardening company's carbon footprint, taking small steps like shifting away from plastic packaging, and making his business, Back to the Roots, the most eco-friendly it has ever been.
The California-based company is small, employing just 21 people, but it expects to make around 100 million dollars in sales this year. The moves it has made are crucial to the fight against climate change.
The US economy depends on small businesses. "We power most of the jobs, most of the growth and, therefore, I think we will also power most of the change, because we started selling organic gardening kits more than a decade ago."
Amazon and Walmart face a lot of public pressure over their goals.
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit charity that runs the global emissions disclosure system, has found that a company's supply chain produces more emissions than the company on its own.
It found that supply chains produce more emissions than the company.
"You can't solve the climate problem if you don't address small businesses," says Michael Vandenbergh. They make up a large portion of the carbon emissions associated with big companies' supply chains.
Half of the American workforce is employed by small businesses.
It's easy for them to fly under the radar because of their large numbers.
Billions of emissions savings can be unlocked by focusing on supply chains.
Simon Fischweicher is the head of corporations and supply chains for the North America branch. It's incredibly important that tens, hundreds and millions of small enterprises are suppliers to these large corporations.
One of the most effective tools is the global value chain.
Small and medium-sized businesses are the fuel that drives the world economy if it's true that the US is the engine.
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As the climate crisis gets worse and larger companies look for the most efficient ways to reduce their environmental impact, cutting a company's "Scope3" emissions has gained traction with big companies.
More than a dozen of the world's largest food firms said at the UN's annual climate summit that they would work with smaller suppliers to end rainforest destruction in their supply chains.
Walmart says 95 percent of its emissions come from its supply chain. Working with small businesses was important from the beginning.
We can help guide them along the way when we say, "Hey, here's some tools." More small businesses are leaning in.
In order to help small firms in its supplier network track their carbon footprint, Walmart launched Project Gigaton.
The Back to the Roots was one of 2,400 businesses that joined the programme in the hopes of lowering their emissions.
Mr Arora says Walmart helped his business find, solve and track its main sources of carbon emissions, pushing it towards its goals.
This is the most efficient we've ever had. He says that the company has been able to scale at an exciting pace while not increasing their environmental footprint.
Walmart says the success at Back to the Roots has been replicated across its network, which has helped to reduce greenhouse gases.
It's halfway towards its goal of cutting emissions by a billion tonnes by the year 2030.
Walmart is not the only one that takes action. Roughly 200 major corporations have leaned on their suppliers to reduce their carbon footprints, according to a new study.
Being sustainable for a small company is a luxury.
Two-thirds of small business owners said they were concerned they wouldn't be able to reduce their carbon footprint because of knowledge, funding and time, according to a recent survey. The majority of them said they would need external funds to reduce emissions.
The director of the SME Climate Hub says that the economic climate doesn't favour small businesses.
They are facing a perfect storm of rising energy prices, inflation and supply chain disruptions. How to survive is the first challenge these businesses will face. She says it's difficult to add another project to the list.
Simon is optimistic at the project. He hopes that one day supply chain decarbonisation will be so commonplace and accessible that even small businesses will start looking at how they can reduce their carbon footprint.
When smaller companies start to adopt supply chain decarbonisation, we will start to see real change.
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