Corporate Sustainability

Intuit's Carbon Footprint

In 2007, we measured our carbon footprint – the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere as we run our business. Our footprint, which includes direct and indirect emissions, was 104,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. To put this into perspectives, it's equivalent to driving 19,000 passenger cars for one year, or 14,000 households' annual electricity use.

To calculate the total carbon footprint, we looked at electricity usage from our facilities and data center, natural gas use, hydro fluorocarbon usage from our air conditioning, backup generators, business air travel, driving to work, alternative commuting programs, and business materials like products, DVD cases, marketing collateral, packaging and office paper.

We feel good about how thorough we've been in this study. Many companies don't take airline travel and commuting into account when they look at their effect on the environment.

Here are some of the results of the study:

  • Intuit used about 42 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2007.
  • Employees took 7,713 flights just between our offices in the Bay Area and San Diego.
  • Intuit produces 5,426 tons of waste in marketing and packaging materials per year. This is equivalent to 1,600 dumpsters full of waste and is 14 percent of the total footprint.

Although our numbers weren't cause for alarm, they pointed to significant opportunities to improve our environmental impact in our energy usage, commute and travel, and materials and packaging.

The study also measured some of the environmental benefit we provide with our paperless services, such as e-filing tax returns, e-mailing reports and forms from QuickBooks, direct deposit of payroll checks, and online bank statements. These services save 430,000,000 pieces of paper, preventing almost 10,000 MTCO2e from entering the atmosphere.

Our direction is clear: reduce the footprint and increase the benefit. And thanks to our ongoing commitment to the carbon footprint study, our results will be measurable each year.

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