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Sustainability by IT

We have this finite window to make the transition.

(Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and climate activist)

To a large extent, sustainable information technology (sustainable IT) is about using IT to reduce companies’, organizations’, and individuals’ environmental impact. So far, in this second part of the book, we have focused on exploring how you can develop a sustainable IT practice to minimize the impact of IT and how we can make data centers, the cloud, applications, data, information and communications (ICT) equipment, and energy management more sustainable.

Technology—“CleanTech” or “SustainTech”—has an incredible opportunity to be an enabler in developing sustainable technology. This chapter will focus on how we can leverage technology to create sustainable solutions and achieve sustainability by IT. In this chapter, we take an outsider’s perspective and look at how IT can help reduce the environmental burden across the organization and in a broader context in our society through applications of use cases and applications. Sustainability by IT is a vast topic that covers a broad spectrum, and it could easily be a book by itself, but hopefully, you will get a glimpse into the art of the possible. Still, we will revisit the critical use cases highlighted in Chapter 2, The Case for Sustainable IT.

The main objectives of this chapter are to introduce you to the different facets of sustainability by IT and how different types of use cases develop different sustainable solutions.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Unlocking a more sustainable future
  • From ownership to usership
  • The need to increase the pace of innovation

By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about how IT can unlock different opportunities to develop or leverage different types of sustainable solutions. This chapter will examine two exciting case studies from Hack for Earth Foundation and Decathlon. Hack for Earth is a non-profit organization facilitating global online hackathons, where it aims to create real solutions to the United Nations’ (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The second case study is from Decathlon, a French sporting goods retailer taking a product—kids’ bikes—and turning it into a circular business model, a product as a service (PaaS). By the end of the chapter, you should have a wealth of examples to apply sustainable solutions and develop new sustainable circular products and services.

Unlocking a more sustainable future

The primary focus of sustainability in IT is to reduce the organization’s environmental impact through sourcing IT products, components, and services that utilize recyclables, restorative, or regeneration design. (Méndez-Villamil 2021)

Sustainability by IT addresses, to a large extent, how IT can help reduce environmental burdens elsewhere in society by using innovation for sustainable business models. (Méndez-Villamil 2021)

In Chapter 2, Rise of Sustainable IT, we outlined 10 key areas: carbon emission reporting, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk management, sustainable sourcing and manufacturing, environmentally friendly transportation, energy-efficient buildings, energy resource management, hybrid-work, eco-friendly travel, development of e-services, and PaaS, as depicted in the following diagram:

Figure 9.1 – Sustainability by IT: 10 key areas for indirect carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction

Figure 9.1 – Sustainability by IT: 10 key areas for indirect carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction

This section will look closely at 10 key areas that IT can support an internal organization to address. We will also closely examine each key area, required actions, and some key examples. All these actions primarily aim at two main environmental aspects of sustainability: climate change mitigation and climate change adaption.

Carbon emission reporting

Roughly 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the Group of Twenty (G20) countries, where the top three—China, the United States (US), and India—amount to 50% of the world’s emissions. (Tiseo 2022) In the US, since 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has mandated companies that emit more than 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2 to report their greenhouse gas emissions. In the United Kingdom (UK), as of April 1, 2019, large companies must disclose their UK annual energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. Smaller companies only must report on their global energy use. (UK Gov 2013) The UK government also enacted a new directive on January 17, 2022, that went into effect on April 6, 2022, and outlines mandatory climate-related financial disclosures. (UK Gov 2022) The directive provides guidance to publicly quoted companies, large private companies, and limited liability partnerships (LLPs) on how to meet new mandatory climate-related financial disclosure requirements. In the European Union (EU), Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) superseded by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is coming into full effect in 2024, which requires companies with more than 500 employees to report on environmental metrics and social aspects such as human rights, employee treatment, anti-corruption, bribery, and diversity. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed on Capitol Hill in Washington during the summer of 2022, which is the most impactful climate bill enacted in the US, focusing on lowering energy costs, building a clean energy economy, and reducing harmful pollution. (The White House 2022) One giant leap forward is the attempt to remove 1 gigaton—or 1 billion metric tons—of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the US. In terms of climate impact, this legislation is 10 times more impactful than any other single piece of legislation ever passed. Earlier in the year, in March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also proposed the Climate Disclosure Rule to require publicly traded corporations to disclose specific financial information about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in public disclosure reports. (SEC 2022) It gives me great hope to see governing bodies across the globe taking decisive action to curb the climate crisis. As more and more countries are making emission reporting mandatory, companies need to respond by providing this data in an accurate and timely fashion.

Actions required to address carbon-emission reporting are set out here:

  • Companies must respond by calculating their corporate footprint across Scope 1, 2, and 3
  • Preferably invest in Carbon Emission Management (CEM) software to streamline data collection, emissions monitoring, emissions reduction planning, corrective and preventive actions (CAPA), and increase reporting frequency
  • If your company has not already done so, publicly commit to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), Exponential Roadmap Initiative, UN Race to Zero campaign, or similar
  • Build a company-wide plan on how you will respond by transforming your operations to meet your targets

Carbon-emission reporting examples are presented here:

  • Several CEM tools are available on the market, but it is yet an immature software discipline. Since it is an emerging and immature market, it is important to evaluate carefully to ensure that the software has the capabilities to serve your needs. Prominent well-established vendors such as Microsoft, Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP), OneTrust, Coupa, Sphera, Atos, and Salesforce—to name a few—are investing heavily in this space and have released their own sustainability solutions. There are also niche players such as Normative and Sustain.Life that exlusively focus on CEM Many equipment vendors, such as Xerox and Canon, are now offering software for calculating emissions related to their equipment. There are also some open source alternatives, such as SME Climate Hub. For links, refer to the end of the chapter in the Further reading section.

ESG risk management

As highlighted in Chapter 1, Our Most Significant Challenge Ahead, the World Economic Forum highlights in the 2022 Global Risks Report (Global Risks Report 2022) that climate action failure is the most significant risk that currently faces humanity, followed by “extreme weather” and “biodiversity” loss. Transitioning to net zero is the most potent mitigating factor to alleviate these risks. Managing your physical and transition ESG risks has become critical to ensure a corporation’s prosperity and long-term value creation. Not long ago, the chief sustainability officer (CSO) was a novelty, but the CSO role has recently become a more frequent member of an organization’s executive management team. Ensuring long-term value creation and financial success while managing ESG risk management has become a top priority for many large companies. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling to bring the two together, which is a big challenge still.

Actions required to address ESG risk management include the following:

  • Ensure senior leadership alignment, engagement, adequate governance, and corporate structures are established.
  • Companies must respond by understanding their physical and transition ESG risks. Physical risks are hazards associated with physical catastrophes such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. In contrast, transition risk is associated with transitioning the economy from fossil fuels and linear business models to changes in policy, circular business models, and new technologies such as expanding renewable energy sources.
  • Ensure it adheres to new directives such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), SEC, and EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), to mention a few. For larger organizations, this requires working with legal and compliance functions within companies. For smaller companies, it might be about working with partners who can guide them through the intricacies of current and changing legislation, as they will not be able to do this internally.
  • Putting ESG risk mitigation and adaptation actions in place.

ESG risk management examples include the following:

  • Earth insights for economic resilience: Climate Engine, headquartered in Carson City, Nevada, is a company that can provide data-driven insights to help organizations provide insights to take action to build economic resilience to climate change. Climate Engine enables you to get visibility into Earth’s systems through satellites and sensors by leveraging climate and environmental information to improve your decision-making, mitigate climate risks, and build financial and operational resilience into the fabric of your organization.
  • Wildfire risk analysis: One of the most apparent signs of climate change is the number of unprecedented wildfires that rage across the world. Just in the US alone, over 5 million acres have been severely burned, equivalent to 3.8 million full-size football fields. (Brown 2022) One way to mitigate wildfire risks is to leverage geospatial data to prevent more costly damages. By leveraging public land and datasets such as temperature, wind, humidity, precipitation, soil moisture, and elevation, together with time series for the next 24 hours, weeks/months, or even longer into the future, we can predict with much higher certainty where the high-risk areas are and where mitigating factors are required. Companies such as Dryad, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, use Internet of Things (IoT) sensors for early fire detection. One of the challenges for this type of solution is identifying stakeholders and funding. Forests usually belong to public bodies or private owners; both have limited resources and funding. The problem is not the availability of solutions but helping stakeholders build the business case.
  • Water availability: Water stress is becoming an increasingly more significant issue as there are currently 2 billion individuals worldwide who lack access to clean water. (WHO 2020) According to a recent Economist report, 44 countries, including the US, China, India, Northern Africa, South Africa, and Australia, face either “extremely high” or “high” water stress levels by 2040. (Economist 2021) Similarly to wildfires, we can use similar datasets to predict floods, droughts, and water availability. Projecting water availability and identifying early prevention of water leakages in the system using forecasting and prevention techniques can help predict water stress in agriculture, hydroelectric production, manufacturing, and public water supply networks. This can also help public and private organizations make better use of finite resources and build a business case for it.
  • Supply chain risk management: With post-Covid effects and the war in Ukraine, the whole global supply chain has come under duress with component shortages, access to raw materials, transportation disruption resulting in long lead times, hyperinflation, and challenges along the entire supply chain. By leveraging supply chain datasets such as locations, partners, routes, modes of transportation, geospatial data, product structures, compound and substance structures, dimensions, product and standards compliance, trade and compliance rules, and—finally—sustainability weight and cost measures, companies can build forecasting models to identify key risk areas but also to help diversify suppliers and help mitigate risks, as well as understanding the sustainability credentials of their suppliers.

Sustainable sourcing and manufacturing

Production and consumption of products are often overlooked in the grand scheme. Roughly 20% of global emissions come from the industry, primarily cement and steel production. As we learned earlier in the book, roughly 80% of the emissions from a computer, tablet, or smartphone come from the manufacturing phase, and any type of electronics follows the same emission pattern. Therefore, it is essential to embed environmental and sustainability practices into all aspects of your business operations, from sourcing sustainable materials to producing and shipping sustainably, reducing the product’s energy consumption, and managing waste and recycling at all stages of the product development life cycle.

A term commonly used in the industry is materials transition, which means enhancing circularity and substituting emission-intensive materials. (Almulla, El-Shahat and Zhou 2022) With global energy prices rising and water resources being scarce, it is essential to constantly improve energy efficiency, reducing water consumption and other scarce resources such as minerals and other materials in all aspects of your business operations. Managing these aspects will make your business operations more sustainable and more resilient and unlock other benefits such as cutting costs, reducing risk, driving revenue, and improving your brand.

Actions required for sustainable sourcing and manufacturing include the following:

  • Design for circularity: Throughout your innovation and design process, you should aim to design for circularity following the three circular economy principles defined by Ellen MacArthur Foundation: designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. Carry out environmental impact assessment (EIA) or a more thorough life cycle assessment (LCA) to understand the environmental impact of the solution through each step of the process.
  • Sustainable sourcing: Build a sustainable supply chain through your finance/procurement functions by working with your suppliers and with your customers and selectively choosing new ones based on a high standard of sustainability criteria from a social and environmental perspective. Ensure they comply with your code of conduct, adhere to existing regulations and reporting, and provide adequate transparency.
  • Sustainable manufacturing: Streamline your production cycle by reducing resource consumption such as energy and water, eliminating waste, and reducing product impact in use and end-of-life (EOL). Tap into Industry 4.0 capabilities such as cloud computing, IoT, robotic process automation (RPA), analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to improve data exchange and intelligent automation to create a connected smart factory. The shop floor is highly digitized in an intelligent factory, continuously collecting and sharing data from connected devices, machines, and production systems. Part of the challenge within Industry 4.0 and sustainable manufacturing is aligning operational technology (OT) and IT. Many factories work with multiple systems across their OT equipment, often proprietary, and aligning all of these is a technical headache and is often not an appealing business case.

Sustainable sourcing and manufacturing examples are presented here:

  • Siemens, with its headquarters (HQ) in Munich, Germany, provides Industrial Connectivity Services (ICS) to increase shop-floor transparency.
  • Leverage forecasting models, as mentioned previously in the ESG risk management section, to build resilience into the entire supply chain. Unilever, a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in London, is leveraging geospatial technology to trace the impact on the supply chain for deforestation, particularly in crops such as palm oil and soy. (Unilever 2020)

Environmentally friendly transportation

The need for transport for both personal and commercial purposes will continue to rise, primarily due to economic expansion. Over the past 10 years, personal and commercial transportation use have increased by 14% and 26% respectively. With 14% of carbon emissions from the transportation sector, switching from combustion engines to electric vehicles is critical. According to IEA Net-Zero by 2050 flagship 2021, some key milestones along the way are that by 2030, 60% of global car sales should be electric, and by 2035, no new internal combustion engine (ICE) car sales will be made, and 50% of heavy truck sales should be electric. In June 2022, the EU voted to effectively ban new fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, with interim steps in 2025 and 2030. Considerable potential exists for increasing the efficiency of existing transportation methods and replacing the need for transportation and travel by remote working. However, it is not just a matter of switching to electric vehicles (EVs) but also aspects such as intelligent transportation systems, traffic management systems, route and fleet optimization, and so on. All of these will have an environmental impact.

Actions required for environmentally friendly transportation include the following:

  • Evaluate your current transportation system and set a target state ambition to transition to a low-carbon transportation system. The challenge, however, is adequate nationwide charging networks and a lack of government financial incentives to switch to EVs. Equally, there is the question of what happens to the lithium batteries required: where is the lithium to come from, and how to recycle it at End of Life (EOL)?
  • Prepare for the transition to an electric fleet. Leverage data-driven insights to measure benefits, total cost of ownership (TCO), and carbon emission impact by switching from a fossil fuel fleet to an EV fleet.
  • Leverage new technology to improve demand-and-supply planning.
  • Rethink delivery networks to minimize and optimize goods movements.
  • Rethink packaging design and materials, as they can help minimize the number of trips and maximize the capacity of each vehicle.
  • Embed environmental and sustainability practices in all aspects of your transportation system—select transport carriers based on sustainability selection criteria.
  • Leverage IoT devices for fleet management or asset tracking.
  • Leverage supply chain planning (SCP) to design your supply network by choosing alternatives closer to the target market, optimizing the use of scarce and constrained environmental resources, and prioritizing marine and rail transportation over aviation. This is a crucial principle of the circular economy to leverage local suppliers to the extent possible. The EU, for example, has enacted the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), where importers into the EU will have to report emissions embedded in their goods under a transition period between 2023 to the end of 2025 and, by 2026, pay carbon tax on it. This is to promote local manufacturing and to prevent carbon leakage, where companies in the EU may relocate carbon-intensive manufacturing abroad to benefit from looser requirements.
  • Optimize your logistics by making every aspect of your transportation value chain sustainable, from loading and docking to routing.
  • Work to build an ecosystem of suppliers for recycled products, as well as look at ways in which you can reuse your waste to reintroduce it into your production chain. Also, work with local authorities to develop a robust ecosystem of partners that can enable local supply, waste management, and so on.

Environmentally friendly transportation examples include the following:

  • Leverage procurement, SCP, and logistics technologies to optimize every aspect of your transportation value chain. For example, beverage and vending machine providers leverage IoT to set up alerts in vending machines when stock is low and replacement is required to minimize routes and trips.
  • Reduce the carbon footprint of packaging and distribution to retailers and end users. Manufacturers are changing the shape of their goods (bottles, boxes, and so on) to optimize space in transportation vehicles.
  • For personal transportation, leverage sustainability-conscious technology to make fuel-efficient trips, choose low-emission traveling alternatives, or choose eco-certified hotels.

Energy-efficient buildings

The building sector across the world generates 38% of global CO2 emissions. To meet the net-zero targets by 2050, emissions from buildings need to fall by 50% by 2030. (Martella 2022) Therefore, it is essential that on our path to net zero, all new buildings need to be zero-carbon-ready. Therefore, we must look for new solutions that offer better control over resources such as energy and water. Reducing the energy consumption in buildings results in reduced energy consumption, and using water more efficiently minimizes the buildings’ environmental impact. Beyond this, we need to assess the material used in the building and the design of the building itself during new construction or retrofitting existing buildings. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and insulation are two factors to be considered that significantly improve the efficiency of the building.

Actions required for energy-efficient buildings include the following:

  • Leverage well-established standards as benchmarks, such as Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED), a worldwide green-building certification program.
  • Create routines for daily occupancy to optimize building utilization. Hence, optimize run times for heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting.
  • Leverage new technology designed to improve energy efficiency and reduce water intensity.
  • Using IoT-based control systems, leverage sensors and controllers to control heating, ventilation, cooling, water, and lighting.
  • Optimize control systems to ensure lighting is turned off in empty buildings and install presence control in occupied premises at a particular time.
  • Identify heating and cooling recovery opportunities to push excess back onto the grid.

Energy-efficient building examples include the following:

  • Google’s new campus in Silicon Valley, California, runs on zero-carbon energy 90% of the time through solar panels on the roof and nearby wind farms. The roofs are covered with overlapping solar panels nicknamed “dragon scales” but also draw power from nearby wind farms to ensure that the campus runs as close to zero-carbon energy as possible. The roofs collect rainwater and channel it into ponds around the campus that are used for flushing toilets and irrigation. The campus has been equipped with the most giant ground-source heat pump in the US to draw heat from the ground to keep the campus warm, and excess heat can be pumped back underground to keep things cool.
  • Another example is Uber, which has built a sustainability-focused HQ in downtown San Francisco. Rather than using air conditioning, it leverages fresh air to keep cool. The building has 180 computer-controlled glass panels on its facades that are open and closed throughout the day. (ShoP Architects 2022). As with Google’s buildings, it is equipped with solar panels and rainwater collection.
  • For more exciting examples of innovation and buildings, check out the non-profit organization World Green Building Council (WGBC): https://www.worldgbc.org/.

Energy resource management

With 41% of carbon emissions coming from the energy sector, decarbonizing the energy sector while providing energy security by providing sustainable, reliable, and affordable electricity is essential. 90% of the planet’s population has access to electricity, a growth of 1 billion people since 2010. Still, roughly 759 million people worldwide lack access to electricity. (World Bank 2021). Illustrating and visualizing electricity and energy usage is an effective way to increase energy efficiency.

Action required for energy resource management include the following:

  • Replace ineffective fixtures such as halogen in favor of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting
  • Focus on establishing solutions leveraging remote controls and automation
  • In residential and business buildings, leverage individual metering and charging consumption for your utilities such as electricity, heating, lighting, water, and cooling
  • Leverage submeters to measure utilization of an individual room or a single workplace to enable cost allocation or create energy-saving plans
  • Explore installing renewable energy sources directly, such as solar panels, heat pumps, or nearby wind farms
  • Explore ways for heat and water recovery to push excess heat and water back to the grid

Energy resource management examples include the following:

  • Honeywell, Johnson Controls, and Schneider Electric, for example, offer building management solutions (BMS) that include a wide range of controllers, field devices, and software to improve the energy efficiency, remote control, and automation of any building.
  • Utility providers such as British Gas offer a residential smart thermostat solution named Hive that allows consumers to reduce their carbon footprint at home.
  • Companies such as Cisco Meraki, headquartered in San Francisco, California, have an entire set of technologies for smart spaces depending on the type of building (office, data centers, campus, and so on). Others, such as Signify, headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands, offer intelligent lighting solutions for buildings too (small, large, public buildings, and so on), including a control-tower management system.
  • Plejd, headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, is a company that offers a wide range of intelligent lighting controllers for private and commercial use. Connected through wireless technology and controlled with a mobile app at your fingertips, it enables you to control lighting remotely, establish different scenes and themes, and leverage automation for flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

Hybrid work

The global Covid-19 pandemic forced workers worldwide to transition from an office-centric to a home-centric work setting. Before the pandemic, the global remote versus office trend was 12% versus 88%, according to Zscaler’s work from the Work-from-Anywhere (WFA) trends dashboard. As we moved into the pandemic, the percentage of remote workers surged to 42%, and for the past 2 years, from March 2020 to June 2022, remote user traffic has been steadily sitting around 40%. (Zscaler 2022) As we are coming out of lockdowns and transitioning into a new normal, the likelihood that we will return to full-time office-based work is improbable. Still, it will be interesting what the next 2-3 years have in store.

Workers have gotten used to the increased flexibility of working remotely from anywhere. Companies leverage a wider talent pool to access resources from anywhere, not necessarily tied to a specific office location. Current technologies enable formal meetings to be replaced by digital ones, leading to less office commuting and significantly less domestic and international business travel, resulting in a direct reduction in greenhouse emissions, increased productivity, better life-work balance, and higher employee satisfaction.

Actions required for hybrid work include the following:

  • Impose a clear and concise human resources (HR) policy regarding hybrid working.
  • Promote a hybrid working method to reduce the daily commute to the office 2-3 days a week and reduce domestic and international business travel.
  • Enable digital meetings by leveraging standard software and hardware collaboration tools and file sharing, enabling a better end-user experience.
  • Constantly explore new technologies and ways of working to improve remote collaboration efficiency and effectiveness.
  • There are also many other best practices related to hybrid work, such as enabling workers with the correct ergonomic equipment and tools to work remotely, offering the same possibilities with no different treatment for those working remotely, enabling face-to-face opportunities and spaces, and rearchitecting offices for more social spaces and meetings. The possibilities are endless when reimagining the future of work.

Here are some hybrid-work examples:

  • Collaboration tools from Microsoft, Google, and Zoom have opened new opportunities to work from anywhere and collaborate seamlessly on a global scale
  • Video and audio equipment from various vendors gives rise to the opportunity for a seamless hybrid working experience

Eco-friendly travel

What Covid-19 taught us is that most work can be done remotely without having to meet face to face. What we learned was that efficiency went up due to a decrease in commute and business travel, but it also put a damper on innovation and social connections. It is improbable that business travel will return to the same levels pre-Covid-19, and different alternatives are being explored. Reducing the need for physical travel requires a mental shift to promoting accessibility over mobility. As we saw in the previous example, IT has generated new opportunities to reduce personal transportation’s environmental impact via hybrid work. Creating alternatives to travel also offers the potential for more flexible working where mobility is replaced with accessibility.

Actions required include the following:

  • Promote remote over physical gatherings to collectively reduce business travel
  • Ensure that the necessary preconditions are met to promote a new way of working
  • Promote and encourage environmentally efficient travel choices
  • Measure and monitor the environmental effects of business travel and seek additional ways to reduce it continuously
  • Consider instituting an internal carbon tax for business travel

Examples include the following:

  • Leverage a corporate traveling portal that promotes eco-friendly travel and measures each journey’s environmental impact. For example, SAP Concur allows tracing the CO2 emissions of work-related trips, finding more sustainable transport alternatives, and offsetting. Although offsetting is not the objective, providing employees with that information and management to make changes accordingly is essential.
  • As the pandemic ends, business travel will start to pick up again, generating greenhouse gas emissions. The total distance traveled by those attending a meeting or an on-site meeting has a negative environmental effect in the form of increased greenhouse gas emissions. Leveraging a meeting point optimizer (MPO) tool can support you in finding the optimal location for meetings. By leveraging a plugin into your existing productivity and collaboration tools, you can compare the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG) footprint of your meetings for different locations with a few clicks. The MPO not only identifies opportunities for GHG reduction but also money and time-saving potential. It evaluates the available options and identifies the location involving the lowest emissions. Examples of companies that offer these types of solutions are CONVIEN, headquartered in Munich, Germany, and Roudle, headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands.
  • Leverage eco-friendly traveling apps that promote conscious traveling to nature and wellness destinations.

Leveraging and promoting e-services

Investing in e-services can increase operational efficiency and minimize environmental impacts by replacing physical manual processes with highly automated digital processes. The development of e-services includes a wide range of use cases, from replacing paper forms to document signing, digital case and document processing e-archiving, RPA and AI, and virtual twins, to mention a few. Next, some key action areas are listed, but the use cases are essentially endless.

Actions required for leveraging and promoting e-services include the following:

  • Prioritize the development of e-services that reduce environmental impact and increase operational efficiency
  • Replace paper-based forms by enabling documents to be signed digitally, such as employment contracts, customer quotes, supplier contracts, and so on
  • Develop IT support for different types of workflows, such as IT service management (ITSM), customer relationship management (CRM), customer service management (CSM), and supplier relationship management (SRM)
  • Invest in document processing technologies such as e-archives that are connected to your business applications and services
  • Automate business processes by leveraging technologies such as RPA and AI

Here are some E-services examples:

  • There are multiple vendors within each discipline. The market is also moving fast, but in a few clicks, you should be able to find out who the top runners are in each discipline from reputable sources such as Gartner, Forrester, and International Data Corporation (IDC).

Product-as-a-Service (PaaS)

More and more, our lives are rapidly transitioning to the consumption of digital services. They commonly fulfill three basic needs: what we need, when we need it, and where we need it. Take Spotify or Netflix, for example, which disrupted their respective industries. We rapidly went from ownership to usership, from buying a physical CD or Video Home System (VHS) tape to streaming a song, movie, or series. Other industries that have been disrupted are the automobile industry moving from car ownership to mobility/ride share, the technology industry moving from packaged software to software as a service (SaaS), and manufacturing moving from machines and devices to selling connectivity or availability. All these services have a common trait: they are circular and can be consumed repeatedly with limited constraints of EOL. Unfortunately, we do not see the same trend with physical products where producers of clothes, food, and electronic equipment digitize their processes. They can undoubtedly modify the consumption model of those goods, moving to—for example—washing machines as a service, clothes as a service, vacuuming as a service, and so on.

As we learned in Chapter 1, Our Most Significant Challenge Ahead, we have reached a yearly global consumption rate of 100 billion tons of materials. Currently, the global economy is only 8.6% circular, leading to an extensive circularity gap. (Circularity Gap 2020) Less than 10% of the materials—such as minerals, fossil fuels, metals, and biomass used in a year—are refurbished, repurposed, or recycled. Out of the 100 billion tons, 91.4 % or 91.4 tons follow a linear model. We have a tremendous circularity gap, and companies need to rapidly shift from a linear to a circular business model and embrace the subscription economy fully. Some companies are making concerted efforts to bring PaaS to market to achieve their sustainability targets and explore new recurring revenue streams.

Actions required include the following:

  • Embrace the subscription economy. Focus on powering new sustainable, circular, customer-centric business models.
  • Focus on extending the product life cycle of your product portfolio.
  • Concentrate on increasing usership and maximizing the utility of your products.
  • Build-in circularity at EOL to ensure raw materials can be recycled and fed back into the sourcing and manufacturing process.

Examples include the following:

  • A smartphone subscription is an excellent example of the future where smartphone manufacturers will offer their products as a subscription whereby customers will pay a fixed monthly fee instead of a hefty upfront cost. The Dutch smartphone manufacturer Fairphone was one of the first to launch such a service. The subscription service allows the consumer to pay a small fixed monthly cost instead of buying it upfront. (Udvarlaki 2022) Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Dell have been offering a PaaS for quite some time. There have also been some reports, yet to be confirmed, that Apple is working on a similar plan to offer its iPhones and iPads as a hardware subscription service. The service is expected to launch in late 2022 or early 2023. (Gartenberg 2022) This is part of Apple’s ongoing push toward increasing the share of the revenue from subscription services. Apple already has a wide range of subscription services in its product portfolios, such as iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness Plus, and Apple News Plus. These services are also available in a collective bundle called an Apple One bundle.
  • Husqvarna, the global Swedish manufacturer of outdoor power products such as garden tractors, trimmers, brush cutters, cultivators, chainsaws, and robotic lawn mowers, launched a pay-per-use model already, back in 2017. (Husqvarna 2017) This is part of the company’s strategy to explore innovative and sustainable solutions. For a small monthly fee, you get access to a “smart” Husqvarna Battery Box, an unattended container containing a wide range of battery-powered garden care products. A mobile app allows homeowners to reserve tools, pay, get instructions, and open the locker to pick up their pre-booked power tools. This is an excellent example of moving from ownership to usership, bringing access to a wide range of garden power tools that are only used occasionally.
  • As the transportation sector is gearing up for a significant shift from ICE vehicles to EVs, car manufacturers such as Volvo Cars are also embracing the sharing economy by offering their customers a flexible car subscription, Care by Volvo. (Volvo Cars 2022) With a fixed monthly fee and only 3 months’ notice, it gives consumers all-inclusive access to a wide range of fully equipped Volvo cars without additional charges for service, maintenance, wear and tear, and roadside assistance. Volvo Cars is committed to becoming a circular business by 2040 by maximizing the use of resource efficiency, eliminating waste, and focusing on the greater use of recycled material. By giving its customers a new alternative to consume its products by subscribing to them, the dynamics changes from car ownership to mobility. The consumer gets access to a car when they need it where they need it, and pays for what they use.
  • Electrolux, the global leader in household appliances, is offering its robotic vacuum cleaner as a monthly subscription service where you pay based on square meters cleaned per month. (Electrolux 2022) The service is orderable online, the robotic vacuum cleaner is sent to your home and quickly set up through a mobile app, and you pay per cleaned square meter. After 4,000 cleaned square meters, a free-of-charge service kit is sent home to replace brushes and filters. Once the device has reached the end of use or the subscription is terminated, Electrolux takes back the product and ensures the product is refurbished and put back in circulation.

In the next section, we will dive deep into an exciting case study from Decathlon, which is embracing the circular economy with kids’ bike subscriptions, turning a product into a service.

From ownership to usership

Beyond applying sustainable principles to its own organization, IT can act as a catalyst for a company by providing impactful digital solutions and practices to support strategic business model transformation. Indeed, in many industries involving physical products, most of the carbon footprint is attributable to the actual good or service being produced, with a significant portion happening outside the company via its supplier’s supply chain. As a result, an impactful way to drive sustainability is to maximize each product’s utilization rate, resulting in fewer products and, ultimately, fewer emissions. But how can you then also achieve sustainable growth? By embracing the circular economy or, using Zuora’s term, the Subscription Economy® to unlock new customer-centric business models. At the heart of the Subscription Economy is the idea that customers increasingly prefer subscribing to the outcomes they want (Zoura 2021) when they want them, rather than purchasing a product with the burden of ownership.

The subscription economy has taken most industries by storm, start-ups and established companies alike, totaling a US dollars (USD) $650 billion market in 2020 and growing at 18% year-over-year. (Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) 2021) In fact, subscription businesses in Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index have experienced 4.6x faster growth in the past decade compared to traditional businesses. (Zoura 2022) They have demonstrated impressive resilience in times of crisis, with four out of five businesses continuing to grow in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. (Zoura 2020) This success is driven by increasing consumer demand. According to Zuora’s End of Ownership report, 78% of international adults have subscription services (a seven-point increase since 2018) (Zoura 2021), and nearly two-thirds of subscribers feel more connected to companies with whom they have a direct subscription experience.

Just because a company is transitioning to a circular economy does not necessarily mean that the company or its services are sustainable. However, sustainability should be the primary driver of making the switch in transitioning from a product economy to a circular economy. Let us look at a fascinating case study from Decathlon and Zuora with all the essential ingredients for transitioning from a linear to a circular economy.

Embracing the subscription economy

In this section, we will look at how Decathlon embraces the Subscription Economy to power new sustainable, circular, customer-centric business models. The Decathlon case study provides a recent and perfect illustration of the Subscription Economy leveraged to create savvy sustainable business models. Decathlon leverages Zoura, which is, according to the research firm Forrester, one of the leading cloud-based subscription management platforms to nurture and monetize ongoing customer relationships in their journey from experimenting to scaling new business models. The case study presented next is written in full by Yann Carré, leader of Rent, a rental service across a range of products at Decathlon, and Michael Mansard, Principal Director of Subscription Strategy and EMEA Chair of the Subscribed Institute at Zuora. (Zoura 2022)

Transforming business models – evolving to a subscription business to reach sustainability objectives

Decathlon is the world’s largest sports retailer. Founded in France in 1976, the company has a presence in 69 countries, with 1,600 stores and 93,000 employees. Decathlon manages the in-house research, design, production, logistics, and distribution of its 10,000+ products, partnering with global suppliers and marketing its brands directly to consumers in Decathlon stores.

Circularity and usage are at the heart of Decathlon’s strategic challenges. The company will not be able to achieve its 53% greenhouse gas reduction target by 2026 (Decathlon 2020) without deploying new measures at all company levels. A more sustainable design and better management of energy consumed from transportation and production are essential but insufficient. It is also essential for the company to build a sustainable business model and not just turn an unsustainable model into a more sustainable one. Simply put, a sustainable model consists of better managing the product life cycle, from design to recycling, ensuring it is possible and easier to multiply the uses for a single product over its lifespan. This translates into renting, repairing, retrofitting, and (re)selling products over a longer life cycle.

Taking the plunge with a first initiative – Kids Btwin bike subscriptions

Children outgrow their bikes every 1 to 2 years, frequently replacing them. Kids’ bicycles weigh on average between 7 kilograms (kg) and 12 kg, made from highly durable materials such as steel or aluminum that generate a significant ecological footprint. Producing a bike generates an average footprint of 96 kg CO2 equivalent (CO2e). (Decathlon 2021) Finally, Decathlon’s bikes are already guaranteed for life on purchase if they are taken care of.

But why buy a durable bike for your child when you know you will have to resell it 12 months later on a second-hand site or have it sit idle in the basement? Instead, what if you could benefit from its use, plus valuable services such as maintenance, insurance against breakage, or—optionally—against theft, and have the peace of mind that you are automatically entitled to change and access the next bike you need at any time?

Since Decathlon is the world leader in children’s bikes and the world’s second-largest bike brand behind Giant, we can imagine the opportunity when Decathlon’s customer discovers, starting with children’s bikes, that they can also subscribe and rent their favorite products rather than buy them. Subscribing to a product at a young age can also create more sustainable habits early on.

In the end, there are four winners from this equation: the customer who has a higher value for money (the parent), the user who always gets the “right bike at the right time” (the child), Decathlon, and our planet. This is the positive impact of circular business models, which increase the product lifetime and quality over planned obsolescence, sustainably balancing value and risk over time. That is the promise of “Btwin Kids”.

Understanding the evolution of subscription business models – shifting from products to subscriber-centric services

In 2018, Decathlon started piloting its first test of a subscription service, “Btwin Kids”, based on a circular model for its children’s bikes, ranging from Euros (EUR) €3 to €8 per month. In 2020, they tested a “leasing”-type subscription program in France, with a 12/24/36 months’ commitment, with access to higher-end adult sports and e-bikes that typically have a price tag above €1,000. Finally, and shortly after, they piloted a third offering called “D RENT”, starting at €15 per month, allowing adults to flexibly subscribe to a bike or an e-bike from a “bicycle library”, with very minimal commitment (3 months). Beyond providing access to a bike, these three offerings encompass different levels of differentiating services, such as maintenance, insurance, and roadside assistance.

Subscriptions may not sound like “rocket science”. These services involve a catalog of products and services, a customer, a user, and a transaction with a merchant. So, at a high level, it may not look that different from retail, but on closer inspection, it dramatically changes a key element: the business model.

There is a massive difference. At its core, the subscription model is about shifting from growing by selling more units and pushing ownership to the end user to growing through monetizing an ongoing customer relationship thanks to ever-improving results. These personalized services continue to provide value.

In short, this means that Decathlon Rental is about transforming into a customer-centric service operator, focusing on maximizing lifetime value. Here’s proof: in the subscription model, more than 70% of a company’s revenues come from its existing subscribers. (Zoura 2022)

The following diagram illustrates the process of moving from a product-centric business model to a subscription service-centric one:

Figure 9.2 – Moving from product-centric to subscription service-centric business model (Zoura 2022)

Figure 9.2 – Moving from product-centric to subscription service-centric business model (Zoura 2022)

This means significant changes on the frontend, such as the value proposition, offering design, or pricing, but also on the backend, with key supporting processes such as finance, supply chain, operations, and the underlying technology stacks. While the retailer’s focus used to be on a traditional sales checkout, it now needs to be expanded over the life cycle for each subscriber. Also, Decathlon precisely manages its product inventory through key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Days Sales of Inventory (DSI), which is critical for a retailer’s finances. Inventory is then forecasted based on complex sales and operations planning involving factors such as weather. In contrast, inventories are turned into assets that need to be tracked, depreciated, or continuously serviced in the subscription business. This flips the existing business script upside down, creating different areas of complexity by impacting the overall stock management rules, associated balance sheets, and systems.

Small-scale subscription testing may seem relatively straightforward, but scaling is much more complicated, yet beyond these challenges are also tremendous opportunities with subscription and circular models. For example, while in a traditional product model, a retailer does everything possible to bring customers back to their store, retention is the default behavior for subscriptions. First-party customer data is also now at one’s fingertips.

In a sustainable world requiring manufacturers to maximize product lifespan and utilization, subscriptions are a holy grail. One could claim that many brands and retailers, including Decathlon, have also launched “resell” initiatives addressing such a requirement. Yet, in a resell strategy, a company has to spend money to reacquire both the physical product and the customer. In a subscription model, the subscriber and the physical products are “retained” by design. They are part of the economic model from the beginning, which tends to maximize asset and customer lifetime value.

Decathlon expects to benefit from a subscription model since the company already values creating durable, sustainable, serviceable, and repairable products, offering them a further competitive edge and an incentive to keep pushing in that direction. Here’s proof: Decathlon has a strategic board-level metric and North Star: “Sustainable Revenue”. The promise of creating a new business model that reduces your footprint by optimizing use rather than producing future waste is easier said than done.

Let’s be concrete – how to get started

There is no “secret recipe” for subscription success. Start pragmatically as seems right for your business. Before launching their subscription service, Decathlon had the opportunity to discuss benchmarks with peers, such as a leading Nordic furniture retailer, yet Decathlon’s team understood they needed to find an authentic way to their unique DNA. So, the retailer took a hands-on “test and learn” approach to better understand rental models, the cultural differences, the particularities linked to sports, and the solution partners. Testing allowed Decathlon to build unique first-hand insights and distinguish what was most important to their subscribers.

Using a sports analogy, races are not won without long training hours; despite that, the Decathlon team acknowledges that some races will be lost and mistakes will be made. Decathlon also listened a lot and consulted those who know and who have been in the subscription model business for longer than it has.

By taking enough time for “trial and error” in 2018 for 24 months, starting with three stores, Decathlon has built a solid foundation. As of June 2022, Decathlon is ready to accelerate: 100% of the 330 French stores now offer bike subscriptions (after launching in the last 6 months), with nearly a double-digit conversion rate of subscriptions compared to buying bikes. Upon launch, Decathlon intentionally focused its communication strategy at its stores and through targeted digital campaigns. Once it expands to mass media, subscriber growth will surely accelerate further.

Moving forward – outcomes and what is next

Sports-as-a-service is Decathlon’s vision, and the company prioritizes its subscriptions over other forms of rentals (such as short-term). A variety of equipment, including stand-up paddleboards (SUPs), kayaks, and e-bikes, is available for rental through Decathlon. The mental framework of selecting strong subscription candidates is straightforward but powerful: does the associated sport require flexibility, recurring changes, swaps, or returns of products (such as changing ages, levels, or seasons)? Or is ownership of the product linked to a clear pain point, such as the need for storage when a user lives in an apartment in a city?

A customer may need a bike to get around town or, for their child, want to practice fitness and cardio sports at home without paying for a gym membership, or rent a mountain bike for a weekend, skis for a week, or an SUP for 3 hours…

Finally, as Decathlon operates with a strong local and entrepreneurial mindset across 60 countries, it was vital to progressively embark the market units on the sustainable business model transformation journey. The local markets are now excited about the potential of subscriptions: they understand that the best price does not just require a good, sustainable product. Still, it can also mean flexibility to pay for what you use. Although renting will not replace ownership at Decathlon, the company believes renting and usership will become more and more prevalent. The new business models could be the “go-to model” for some customers, while it will complement ownership for others.

Scaling with the associated digital landscape – driving positive IT environmental economics

Decathlon knows that reducing its impact is a constant effort across the board. When Decathlon has internal discussions on how to build and evolve its IT/digital stack to deploy rental subscriptions, they always ask themselves two questions, as follows:

  1. Is this the most straightforward and effortless process for the customer?

AND

  1. Is there another application system that already processes this functionality?

Biomimicry and Darwinism teach us that nature selects what is essential and effective, and the rest disappears. Decathlon’s obsession is to offer only what is necessary, preferring frugality over hyper technology. While being omnichannel-native and data-driven, Decathlon team members know human interaction is often more important than systems.

In summary, as its subscription services continue to scale up, Decathlon is making its products more sustainable without creating a more significant, unsustainable IT footprint. At the same time, its unique “human touch” helps to create lasting value for its customers.

The need to increase the pace of innovation

Although much of the technology to build sustainable solutions exists today, we need to increase the pace of innovation in creating real solutions for SDGs. We must bridge the gap between the private and public sectors and bring different actors, from corporations, academia, governments, and citizens, to co-create citizen-driven innovation. One way to do so is to take advantage of the concept of hackathons on a global scale. In the next section, you will hear from Ann Molin, the general secretary of Hack for Earth Foundation. This non-profit organization creates global hackathons creating real solutions to SDGs.

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is an innovation competition. For a limited time, often between 24 and 48 hours, participants—so-called hackers—gather and work intensively on a challenge. These challenges are created before the competition and are usually formulated as questions. The participants work in teams, where different skills complement each other. The goal is to create new digital solutions. Hackers often have open data (information that can be freely shared and reused; see a further description in the next paragraph) as raw material. A jury selects the best solutions based on several criteria, and after the award ceremony, the competition is over.

Traditionally, a hackathon is a programming competition where the majority of the participants are programmers, developers, or, in some other way, technically savvy. However, the hackathon concept can also be applied in other contexts to drive development and create embryos for new solutions quickly. A hackathon can also be an excellent activity to gather skills from widely different areas, to facilitate that competence from one area cross-fertilizes another, a concept that has been tested within the framework of Hack for Sweden, an initiative to raise awareness and demonstrate the value of the use of government agencies open data. The goal is thus to create synergy effects between different subject areas in favor of the digital solutions’ height of innovation, user-friendliness, and usefulness.

A hackathon can be based on data, but it can just as quickly be created based on the need to solve an identified problem that has to do with something else. The crucial thing is the form—to gather for a limited time, work concentrated and intensively in cross-competence teams, and have a deadline for submitting solutions. A hackathon can therefore be arranged in many different contexts—for example, in a school class, workplace, or local tenants’ association.

In addition to the stated purpose of creating well-founded new services and solutions in the chosen area, a hackathon can also be an effective tool for building new networks and breaking down barriers—so-called silos—between and within organizations, departments, areas, and sectors. When people with different backgrounds, experiences, and skills meet and work to solve a concrete problem jointly, something happens beyond sitting in a meeting and talking to each other. The experience of actively working together and co-creating a standard solution to a challenge creates a special kind of trust, expands networks, and establishes new relationships between people—relationships that have more weight because of the shared experience of co-creation. When different networks are expanded in society, the possibilities increase that the right skills are used in the proper context—for example, in innovation work.

Citizen-driven innovation

The non-profit Hack for Earth Foundation’s mission is to create sustainable tech solutions on a global scale through citizen-driven innovation and using the hackathon method as a tool to accomplish the following:

  • Sustainability: The UN’s 17 SDGs are at the heart of the foundation’s mission. Together with all parts of society—private and public sector, academia, and citizens—we find solutions for society tomorrow.
  • Diversity: We believe the best solution for society comes from bringing all kinds of competencies, backgrounds, ages, and experiences together, breaking down silos and barriers, and building new bridges.
  • Impact: A great idea is nothing if it is not made a reality. By supporting the best solutions from our hackathons and other events, Hack for Earth Foundation is an active partner in creating fundamental tools for citizens to use in their everyday life.

With the three core values of sustainability, diversity, and impact, we have created a process with three steps that creates citizen-driven innovation on a global scale: Dream-Hack-Build, as represented in the following diagram:

Figure 9.3 – Hack for Earth innovation process: Dream-Hack-Build

Figure 9.3 – Hack for Earth innovation process: Dream-Hack-Build

This process has been tried out within the Hack for Sweden government mission and further developed in the Hack for Earth project at Expo 2020, in collaboration with the UN and Sweden at the world exhibition Expo 2020 Dubai. Here is how we did it.

Dream for Earth

Via the website https://dreamforearth.com, the foundation collected 1,200 dreams about the world’s future. The dreams came from citizens of 61 countries and were shared on the website in a video or text. All dreams were linked to one or more of the UN’s 17 global SDG goals by the person who shared the dream. 45 appointed ambassadors disseminated information about Dream for Earth, and some of the other specially invited influencers were representatives of the 30 partner organizations for the Hack for Earth project.

All 1,200 dreams were analyzed with an AI tool, and in this way, the foundation got a good overview of what future people in 61 countries dream of, linked to the UN’s global goals. The analyzed results from Dream for Earth were on display for 6 months in an interactive exhibition in the Sweden Pavilion at the world exhibition Expo 2020 in Dubai from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022. In the Dream for Earth exhibition, visitors could share their dream for the world linked to global goals and participate in the Dream for Earth results. More than 500,000 people visited the Sweden Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai. The results from Dream for Earth were used to formulate challenges for the Hack for Earth hackathon.

The foundation shared the analyzed results of the Dream for Earth campaign with the third partner organization for the project. Five concrete challenges were formulated in the seven challenge categories for the Hack for Earth hackathon. This way, the challenges in the hackathon were relevant to what people worldwide believe are important issues for our future. The seven challenge categories, Health, Human Rights, Environment, Sustainable Society, Water, Education, and Partnership, were created in collaboration with the UN. For more information, visit https://www.hackforearth.com/challenges.

Hack for Earth

The global Hack for Earth 2021 hackathon took place online for 2 weeks, from October 22 to November 2021. 1,371 teams from 121 countries participated in the competition to create sustainable solutions to the UN’s 17 SDGs.

During the hackathon, mentors (experts in their fields from around the world) were available to the competing teams in various areas of expertise, ranging from cyber security to human rights. 20 lectures for the participants were organized in various relevant subject areas by partner organizations and specially invited experts. The foundation’s project team was available to answer questions around the clock and broadcast live sessions for participants via the foundation’s YouTube channel during the hackathon so that the hackers could get fast answers to their questions.

Seven jury groups were appointed, with representatives from the Hack for Earth 32 partner organizations. The jury groups assessed the solutions received in the seven challenge categories (Health, Human Rights, Environment, Sustainable Society, Water, Education, and Partnership). They selected a winner in each category based on six jury criteria. The winning teams had members from 18 different countries.

Build for Earth

The seven winners entered Build for Earth, a unique acceleration program formulated and organized by the Hack for Earth Foundation. The mission of Build for Earth is to support and guide Hack for Earth winners in creating simple tools for the good of society, making great ideas come to life and not letting them stay on paper.

Based on current research and global innovation expertise on sustainable innovation, the Build for Earth acceleration program entails the following, customized to the seven winning solutions’ needs. The 6-month program is coordinated and executed in close collaboration with the Hack for Earth partner community, involving guest lecturers and mentors. You can check out more examples of Hack for Earth winning solutions made a reality at https://www.hackforearth.com/winners.

A common problem reported by the private and public sectors is that innovation happens in fenced-off silos with minimum collaboration between crucial actors such as corporations, academia, governments, and citizens. Applying the concept of hackathons is a great way to infuse citizen-driven innovation to create global, scalable, and sustainable solutions. Hopefully, the case study from Hack for Earth Foundation will inspire you to arrange your hackathons either within your company or open to the public, or why not get involved with the foundation itself and leverage the global innovation platform that has been built, connecting critical stakeholders around the world, including the UN?

Summary

Now that we have reached the end of this chapter, you should hopefully have a better insight into how IT, SustainTech, and CleanTech can unlock different opportunities to develop or leverage different types of sustainable solutions. In this chapter, we looked into ten specific areas on how technology can be applied for carbon emission reporting, sustainable sourcing and manufacturing, environmentally friendly transportation, energy-efficient buildings, energy resource management, hybrid work, eco-friendly travel, e-services, and turning a product into a service.

Furthermore, we looked further into how the trend of moving from ownership to usership unlocks several sustainable circular opportunities in a wide range of industries.

We explored two exciting case studies. The first case study was from Decathlon, which is taking a product, kids’ bikes, and turning it into a circular business model, a PaaS. The second one was from Hack for Earth. This non-profit organization is connecting the world in global online hackathons, where they aim to create real solutions to the UN’s SDGs.

This chapter marks the end of the book’s “what” section. After reading this chapter, you should have a wealth of examples to apply sustainable solutions and develop new sustainable circular products and services. In the following three chapters, why will start exploring the “how” by assessing our sustainable IT maturity, establishing a GHG emission baseline, creating a sustainable IT strategy, and turning your strategy into action.

Further reading

If you would like to know more, please refer to the following resources:

Bibliography

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