Today is Earth Day, a day celebrated around the world to focus on environmental sustainability.  One Airdrie company is making a huge environmental impact in the world and is being recognized for their efforts.  

Carbon Credit Solutions (CCS) has been nominated for the 27th Annual Emerald Awards that recognize great achievements in sustainable development and bring awareness to the unique environmental projects occurring throughout Alberta.  

CCS is nominated in the Small Business Category.  CEO and Chairman of the company Edward Alfke believes many Alberta companies are helping the environment and the province is one of the leaders in the world, yet most aren't recognized for their work.  

"Alberta has done a lot more than most jurisdictions, certainly in North and South American, but in the world but we don't tell our story and don't let the world know how much we are doing.  It's really nice when you're working hard in the trenches and all my troops are out there in the field, gathering data, working in cold and rain and mud out in the field and our data team who just work every single day gathering high accuracy data in.  It's really nice to get recognized for all that hard work."

CCS has been around for ten years and was founded by Alfke's business partner Alastair Handley, a software platform expert who prior to starting Carbon Credit was involved in the start-up of what Alfke jokingly refers to as a "small Alberta company called Westjet" as Lead Developer.  Handley created a software platform that measures greenhouse gas emissions reductions on thousands of environmental projects. 

Alfke came on board in 2014 and since that time the company has grown by over 800 percent.  It now has more than nine million acres of Alberta farmland sequestering carbon in the soil.  Alfke says the company does anything that contributes to the slowing of global warming. 

"Anything that's going to sink carbon or reduce GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions, that's where we play.  Both on the emissions production and reducing side and then on creating green projects to offset those emissions, thereby reducing the scorecard for the province and the country overall."

CCS advises the Alberta, Ontario and Maritime governments.  The company has 2,620 clients including Fortune 100 companies such as Monsanto, Royal DSM, and McDonald's. 

If CCS wins an Emerald Award when they're presented in Calgary, it won't be the first award that Alfke has taken home. 

"This year I was graced with the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Ernst and Young for Clean Technology and Environmental Contribution.  We won Global Energy's Best Carbon Credit Consultancy and Best Green Product Attainment.  We were a finalist in the Alberta Business Awards of Distinction and we just won the Business in Calgary Leader Award."

Alfke is proud of his company's work in reducing the world's carbon footprint.  "We've taken 720,000 cars equivalent of carbon out of the atmosphere with our little company here in Airdrie and we're getting recognition for that contribution.  It's very cool, very encouraging.  The Emerald Award is a very prestigious award as well as we're just a finalist right now but we'll know in another month how we did."

The 27th Annual Emerald Awards will be presented on June 5th at Theatre Junction Grand in Calgary. 

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