Our ‘Thinking Out Loud’ series, delves into the minds of our consulting team, to find out about the important topics our clients are challenged with today
Chetan Mistry, Manager and Marta Koscielak, Senior Consultant at Wavestone share their invaluable thoughts on what can be done to ensure companies successfully implement digital sustainability.
We discuss the trends within the digital sustainability arena, covering awareness, major drivers and regulations, key contributors and how Wavestone supports clients to achieve their sustainability ambitions.
Why is digital sustainability important?
When it comes to digital sustainability, we must think about the impact of everything digital to the environment. According to a 2019 study carried out by Green IT, greenhouse gas emissions linked to the digital world were responsible for almost 4% of the total global carbon footprint. With the Paris Agreement enforcing that CO2 levels must stay below 2°C by 2030, actions must be taken now to make sure this goal is reached.
What are the major drivers for companies to implement digital sustainability?
First and foremost, Compliance and Regulation: Governments across the world are beginning to build initiatives, targets and regulations to become more sustainable, and digital sustainability is a key part to this.
Policies such as the UK Government’s Net Zero Strategy 2050, sets out a 10 point plan to ’Build back greener’ to meet the net zero target by 2050. Such policies and regulations are driving companies to get ahead of the curve and set ambitious digital sustainability objectives today to meet these goals.
Moreover, companies are being driven to take a good look at their procurement processes and review how sustainable their This is to ensure their supply chain aligns with their external and internal sustainability targets.
Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a core aspect of many businesses, with sustainability increasingly becoming a key part of the CSR agenda. This is driving initiatives within digital sustainability such as charity donation schemes for laptops and PCs, or eco-gestures awareness campaigns
Recruitment and Retention is another key driver. Candidates are actively seeking organisations who are committed to making their operations more sustainable and existing employees are pushing the employers to improve their social responsibilities.
Finally, brand image. Many consumers consciously choose products and services from companies who actively manage sustainability. They will often research this element before engaging with a brand. Companies cannot afford to take no action.
What are the key contributors to a company’s digital carbon footprint?
The digital world encompasses everything organisations use in relation to data centres, telecommunications, WAN/LAN, mobile stations, user services and end user devices. They include laptops, desktops, mobile and fixed phones, and meeting room equipment.
All of these technologies contribute to the digital footprint. This includes both the emissions created during the manufacturing of the physical components and the emissions caused by the continual 24/7 running of equipment and applications.
How can companies reduce their digital carbon footprint?
There are several ways companies can do this:
A quick win in this space is to review your supply chain and determine where the main contributors to your carbon footprint are coming.
Typically, this is either through the services and suppliers or through operations. Reviewing your supply chain to see what contributes the most to your carbon footprint can unearth some interesting findings. Indeed, it’s also the hardest to control, so building substantiality into the procurement process and choosing the right partners to work with is a good strategy to implement, rather than retrospectively reviewing suppliers after they are in place.
We are working with a lot of clients in this space. We help them to understand where they are on their digital sustainability journey, by assessing and understanding their current position and goals, and then determining how to reach them.
Together we define a roadmap spanning a timeline corresponding to the organisation’s targets to show the required steps to achieve the set objectives, and then support the implementation.
In addition, we help to calculate greenhouse gas emissions, either across their entire digital estate, or focused on a specific element, for example data centre energy consumption.
Our clients require help selecting third parties or products against a sustainable framework.
We take clients on a journey to embed sustainability criteria into procurement frameworks, and to create an end-to-end waste management strategy. For the latter, this encompasses reviewing devices and their energy consumption. What happens during the lifecycle? What happens to these products at the end of lifecycle? Are they thrown away? Recycled? Do they get reused elsewhere? These are all key questions that would be reviewed during this exercise.
A good example is the lifecycle of end user devices. Energy is consumed during the manufacturing process (including extraction and processing or raw materials) which contributes to a carbon footprint constant attributed to a specific device. The longer you use a device, the smaller the yearly carbon footprint is linked to manufacturing (as the initial constant gets divided by the number of years you use it). To this figure one needs to add the greenhouse gas emissions linked to usage of the device, in order to calculate the complete carbon footprint.
This exercise can help to educate not only the company and but also the employees on what sustainability is, what the drivers for moving towards that way are and what each person can do to help.
This is around incorporating responsible design into projects so products that are already in place. Always asking the question: “What can we do to make things more sustainable?” and being more responsive and responsible for things such as waste management or understanding where greenhouse gases can be produced.
Companies can increase awareness of climate change and digital sustainability by running awareness sessions for all employees. Wavestone runs a programme ‘Climate Fresco’, conducted by an accredited trainer. This provides a macro view of “why should I care about this?.” Through participating in ‘Climate Fresco’ sessions, it illustrates the reasons why we’re in an alarming situation. A powerful message is delivered through these sessions: if we don’t do anything, how does the future look? And, we have found this to really resonate with people.
How long will it take for sustainability to become the new norm for companies?
There’s definitely a lot of companies that are thinking about it right now. COP 26 that took place recently has sparked further interest. Hence, the pressure is on for companies to take the sustainability road and really think about their operations. But I would imagine that it will still take some time, maybe another 5 years, or another 10 years for this to truly be embedded into a company’s DNA. Asking the question of where am I and can I change to be more sustainable as an organization? I think, at least 5-10 years before we’re there.
Final Piece of Advice
Chetan Mistry
Manager
Companies believe sustainability is a noble cause, but also something that’s going to be extra costs, effort and time. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. We undertake engagements that help our clients reduce costs. For example, Cloud FinOps, where we look at everything a client has within the cloud, see what still needs to be there and do some form of rationalisation. Not only does that reduce costs, but it also reduces carbon footprint. Sustainability can be a win-win and that’s the way it should be viewed. You can reduce your carbon footprint whilst also reducing costs.
Marta Koscielak
Senior Consultant
Your Digital Sustainability roadmap should comprise of two elements: quick-win actions with a high short-term impact and long-term initiatives for continuous improvement of your carbon footprint. To ensure the success of your strategy, all actions need to have measurable impact and your methods of measurement should follow the same assumptions and approach so you can easily understand the changes and trends.
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