Re-think! our environmental footprint

CALCULATION OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT

EXKi, in partnership with the WWF and Ecolife, is one of the first private companies in Europe to have calculated the ecological footprint of its restaurants. The EXKi calculation covered both the restaurants and the equivalent in area of productive land needed for daily operations. The environmental footprint assesses the productive area of land needed to ensure our way of life or that of a city, a country, or the entire planet.

The ecological footprint takes into account the different types of bio-productive areas:

The ecological footprint is an overall indicator: it can express all of the environmental impact parameters in a single number.

Arable Land Pastures Fisheries Forests Built-Up Land

After a year of collecting data, carrying out calculations, and analyses, EXKi obtained the results for the environmental footprint of its restaurants. On the basis of these results, EXKi took a number of decisions towards reducing its footprint.

Analysis of results has identified priority areas:

Electricity Gas Travel Furniture Paper and Cardboard

Analysis of the Restaurants

• The largest footprint is electricity. When the calculation was finished, only two EXKi restaurants operated on green electricity, the others were all using electricity generated by conventional means, making the footprint much larger. EXKi’s priority is to reduce its consumption through various actions (detailed in the following pages). Since 2008, EXKi restaurants are all using green electricity.

• Gas is the second item with a large footprint. The footprint for gas is directly linked to the area of the restaurant being heated in winter. Some equipment is already being used to reduce the footprint, such as using heat recovered from refrigerator compressors to heat water

• In winter, the temperature is lowered by 1°C in all of the restaurants.

The ecological footprint for travel is mainly due to employees using their car for trips between home and the workplace. This transport mode is mainly used to restaurants not easily accessible by public transport. In cities, on the other hand, public transport is widely used.

• For furniture, the ecological footprint is directly related the depreciation periods. EXKi focuses on materials with a longer life.

• For the base year for calculation (2006), 50% of paper came from recycled fibres. Since 2008, this proportion has risen to 80%.