The charitable sector likely isn’t among Canada’s biggest polluters — oil sands operators, automotive companies, logistics firms, petrochemical plants, and cryptocurrency mines. Is it still under the same obligation to take drastic climate action?

There is virtually no data to show just how much non-profits and charities contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through their operations, but the sector’s share of the pollution pie is likely small. Just over half of all of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in 2019 came from either the oil and gas or transportation sectors, according to data from Environment and Climate Change Canada. The other Canadian economic sectors account for between 7 and 12 percent of the country’s total GHG emissions.

That’s not to say the sector doesn’t have any impact on climate emissions. Most non-profits and charities produce emissions through staff and program-related travel, temperature control in the buildings they use, and — increasingly — the use and disposal of computer equipment.

By 2025, digital technology is expected to account for 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the CIO Strategy Council. Energy consumption by computers is also rising six times faster than other technologies, and Canada’s social impact sector is no exception to this rapid rise.

Why, then, should reducing environmental impact matter to Canada’s social impact sector, especially organizations that don’t ostensibly have a climate mandate, like childcare centres, employment training non-profits, or afterschool facilities? Simple: the future of the very clients non-profits and charities help will be made much, much worse by a swiftly warming planet. Everyone needs to do their part to reduce their footprint, including non-profits and charities. “Society has to be paying attention,” says Tina Crouse, CEO and founder of tech-for-good start-up Answer.it. “And not just a select group – we need a much broader representation.”

Saving energy now

After Michèle Nadeau took over as executive director of YWCA Moncton three years ago, she proposed switching out the agency’s daycare menu with a 100 percent plant-based one. Eating a plant-based diet was a lifestyle choice Nadeau had made years earlier, but she believed that moving her agency away from meat would also help lower emissions. Nearly all of New Brunswick food is imported from outside of the province. “As an agency,” she explains, “it was our way of doing something really concrete.”

Within two weeks of launching the agency’s plant-based menu, Nadeau says, the agency was at full capacity. But she has other plans to reduce the ecological footprint of YWCA Moncton, including solar panels for the agency’s rooftop. She even proposed baking environmental sustainability into the agency’s strategic plan, an idea that appears to have caused some friction among board members. “One of the reactions I received was, ‘We’re not Greenpeace,” Nadeau says.

Some board members believed an emphasis on the environment might draw the agency’s focus away from other matters. If anything, Nadeau believes the opposite is true. “It makes no sense for us as a childcare service provider to only care about children now,” she says, “and not be concerned about their future.”

Other organizations, like Answer.It, are doing what environments have urged for decades — limiting travel and power use. “We look like we’re not outputting very much because we’re not manufacturing anything, we’re not flying, we’re all remote,” Crouse says. But computer use is now a huge contributor to GHG emissions worldwide — and there’s no avoiding IT as a tech company. Crouse’s team now has a policy of turning off their video during meetings (with the exception of whoever is speaking). They’ve even bought carbon offsets for a staff member based in Tunisia to fly back and forth to Canada.

To both Answer.It and YWCA Moncton, a direct link exists between the effects of climate change and their operations — and they believe that their work as social impact organizations requires them to confront it. “We’re already ‘tech for good’,” Crouse explains. “This is part of our consciousness as a social enterprise.” Yet juggling environmental concerns is not always easy for social impact organizations, especially those tackling pressing social issues such as poverty or homelessness with limited budgets.

Mission creep?

As one of Canada’s largest youth-focused agencies, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada (BGC Canada) is no stranger to the idea of urgent climate action. Many of the youth who attend BGC programming are big believers in it. “We’ve had conversations — not extensive ones — about the cause of our own carbon footprint,” says Owen Charters, president and CEO of BGC Canada. Much of it comes down to work-related travel or staff commuting to and from the organization’s facilities.

But BGC Canada doesn’t expect to be a leader when it comes to the environmental sustainability of its operations. Not because the organization doesn’t care about the climate – Charters describes it as the “fight of our generation” – but because it is also balancing a lot of other objectives like youth empowerment, parenting programs, and career development. “It’s about the prioritization of a charitable mandate,” Charters says. “We have to take a very hard look at the cost-benefit of doing something more significant, versus a critical mission that we think is quite important.”

To begin with, Charters believes the organization’s footprint is fairly small. When asked about their most pressing issues, youth at BGC Canada rank climate action as important — but poverty ranks higher. “That may be because of the constituency we serve,” Charters explains. “If we had different youth who were more privileged, they might actually have more time to consider climate as their number one concern.”

For BGC Canada (and other social service organizations), the worst consequences of climate inaction loom years or decades in the future. Hunger and poverty are acute, dangerous, and immediate. 

The rising use of computers and other digital equipment is nonetheless alarming. IT waste and energy usage is ballooning across the planet and Canada’s social impact sector, with its recent focus on digitization, is complicit in that.

Cutting back

One way some Canadian organizations are trying to get a handle on their IT use is by trying to measure and account for their energy consumption and wastage. The CIO Strategy Council, a body of Canadian tech executives and chief information officers, recently launched the Sustainable IT Pledge, an open promise signed by dozens of entities, including a few social impact organizations. One of them is Poptronic, a Cornwall, Ont., based startup best described as Blockbuster for gadgets. (Another is Answer.It).

Kelly Bergeron, Poptronic’s co-founder, says she wants the startup’s renting process to keep electronics out of landfills and serve a social good in the meantime – contributing to the idea of a circular economy. “We want to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to end-of-life processes,” she tells Future of Good. “So getting on the Sustainable IT Pledge made the most sense to us because these are leaders in this space in Canada.”

At the moment, signatories of the Sustainable IT Pledge promise to set their own GHG emissions reductions targets for their IT operations and supply change and disclose these numbers in reports. Members also pledge to extend the service life of their devices and equipment, teach their digital workforces to incorporate sustainability lenses in all aspects of their work, promote Canada’s leadership in sustainable IT, and “identify other opportunities for collective action.”

As previously mentioned, some non-profits or charities don’t feel taking significant climate action makes sense for their mission. Still, Katie Gibson, vice-president of strategy and partnerships at the CIO Strategy Council, says it isn’t hard to commit to the Pledge — and may bring benefits beyond emissions reduction. “Taking the Sustainable IT Pledge is free,” she wrote. “It means joining a community of like minded organizations solving these challenges together. And many of the actions that will lower an organization’s carbon footprint, such as replacing devices less frequently, will also save money.”

Only the beginning

Much of the conversation around reducing the environmental footprint of non-profits and charities appears to be in its infancy. None of the three Sustainable IT Pledge signatories contacted by Future of Good had set up their own GHG reporting systems in place. Striking a balance between urgent climate action and fulfilling social service delivery is still important for large charities like BGC Canada, although the necessity of environmental action isn’t lost on them.

In the meantime, Nadeau says discussions around incorporating climate action into the mission of Canada’s YWCA agencies are only growing louder. She says non-profits and charities should see sustainability initiatives as opportunities, not limitations. Take her agency’s decision to offer plant-based meals: Parents loved them — and asked if they could buy their own to prepare at home. Other attendees at YWCA Moncton asked about cooking classes and recipes. Nadeau says they’re also thinking of offering takeaway meals.

These initiatives don’t just feed the hungry or offset carbon. Nadeau says they can also provide income for YWCA Moncton. “We see it all as social enterprises that will generate more revenue in taking care of the environment,” she says.

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