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It all began last year on a flight from Phoenix to Toronto. Ron Dembo, the founder of www.Zerofootprint.net, was flying home from Canyon Ranch, the ultra-chic wellness spa that he was helping find ways to 'go green.'
Dembo is no touchy-feely guru. A former computer science and management professor at Yale, he founded Toronto-based Algorithmics Inc., which he grew from a start-up to the largest risk-management software company in the world. He sold Algorithmics in 2005 and decided that he'd devote his next career to finding practical ways of reducing our carbon footprints. Says Dembo: "If everyone is carbon neutral, we don't have to worry about global warming."
Dembo was in business class, seated beside a man who looked both odd and oddly familiar. "Everyone on the flight seemed to know 'Mr. Cooper' and defer to him," he recalled. At first, Dembo avoided conversation with his seatmate because he prefers reading and working to talking when he flies. But curious, he started a conversation and discovered he was talking to Alice Cooper, the shock rock star. Dembo found Cooper to be smart, articulate and well-read.
Somewhere over Chicago, while the two were in deep conversation, a man came up and introduced himself to them, welcoming them to the flight. In Dembo's words, "Cooper kind of blew him off. But the man left his card and returned to his seat behind us. Then Cooper went to the bathroom and I had a chance to look at the business card. It was Monte Brewer's, the CEO of Air Canada. So I got up and gave Mr. Brewer one of my Zerofootprint stickers."
They talked at length about a future with organic food on planes, lounges built out of sustainable wood and building a brand around sustainability.
"I knew Air Canada was going to face big challenges around carbon emissions. I mean, a single flight from Toronto to Vancouver produces more than a ton of carbon, which is as much as driving your car for a year produces."
"The airline industry is moving fast to create jet fuels that don't pollute and planes that give off fewer emissions. But that will take time. The solution isn't to ground all the planes; our entire economy is based on flying. So in the interim, we need to use carbon offsets."
Carbon offsetting is the process of mitigating greenhouse gasses which are emitted by planes, automobiles, factories, and more. People who are concerned that their lifestyles contribute to the global warming attributed to the production of greenhouse gasses can buy their way out of their guilt by paying to reduce emissions elsewhere in the world. As the Zerofootprint website says: "Every flight you take releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change. When you offset your flight and contribute to certified environmentally-friendly projects, you remove from the atmosphere an amount that corresponds to your share of CO2 generated by your flight."
So Zerofootprint will send your offset contribution to the Degraded Land Restoration Project in Maple Ridge, B.C., where 25,000 indigenous new trees are being planted over an area of 83 hectares to restore the ecosystem.
Not all airlines have carbon offset programs. But Air Canada does as part of an environmental policy — see www.aircanada.com/en/about/environment/index.html
Monte Brewer was impressed. He invited Dembo to come to Montreal to speak to two of his senior executives. "I made my pitch for a vision of Air Canada going green, and they were surprisingly receptive," recalls Dembo. "Pitching 'green' is not like asking someone to buy a software system for their bank. That's their job, to get the best software. But here, I was pitching values as well as expertise, values that I knew everyone in the room shared."
Following that first meeting, there was a long period of negotiation over how the program would work before the partnership was launched this May.
But why Zero Footprint? Why not get one of Canada's big banks or an investment bank that could provide the expertise and credibility to allocate the contributions of Air Canada's customers to support environmental projects that reduce greenhouse gasses?
There were likely two reasons, according to Dembo, who pulled off the David sells to Goliath story of the year.
"After that first meeting in Montreal, Air Canada started doing a lot of digging. In fact, their due diligence was amazing. But I think I had a big advantage because I had run a bigger company in the past and had a good record in business."
The second reason is that brokering carbon offsets is one of Zerofootprint's core businesses, and it takes great care to allocate carbon offset funds to legitimate projects, which also calls on Dembo's global expertise in risk management.
Just months into the Air Canada carbon offset program, it's too soon to declare success.
But the next time you're buying a ticket on www.aircanada.com, you might consider spending an extra $19.20 when you're booking your roundtrip flight from Toronto to London, or $12.80 from Vancouver to Montreal.
You'll know it will go to Zerofootprint in Toronto, and through them, to restore ecosystems around the world, not to mention your own conscience.
Finally, you'll know it all started with Ron Dembo meeting Alice Cooper meeting Monte Brewer.
