Most of us know what is a carbon footprint: the impact on climate change of the human activities and processes. The Paris Agreement, at international level, and the Green Deal, at the European level, are focused on the reduction of the carbon footprint of the products and organizations, to decrease the amount of GHG emissions released in the atmosphere.

Currently, our interests as society, consumers and companies, are the actions that need to be implemented to reduce the negative impacts. However, there is a new perspective that is advancing and that open new opportunities: the carbon handprint.

Carbon handprints are understood as “beneficial environmental impacts that organizations can achieve and communicate by providing products and services that reduce footprints of others” and is can use in a complementary way with carbon footprint to credibly demonstrate the positive impacts generated by companies.

We spoke about this important issue with Greg Norris, director of SHINE (the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise) at MIT