An even more sustainable planet after COVID-19
We need a better planet. That an fact.
We are living difficult times with the COVID-19 outbreak. We have changed our priorities in many aspects, in our lives, in our businesses. Companies start showing signs of social responsibility for the coronavirus crisis and the crisis has brought out the best in the business fabric. Coronavirus could do more for the planet than many government policies: isolation and other changes in human behavior during the pandemic are having unexpected consequences on the environment.
The measures that we have been forced to adopt due to the expansion of the coronavirus are causing changes in the lifestyle and individual behavior of each one of us. Many of the actions we take in response to the pandemic could have the benefit of a reduced carbon footprint, something that hardly any policy measure has achieved so far.
But there was other crisis before COVID-19: Climate change remains to be a huge problem and the open challenges are numerous: the global warming, the circular economy, plastics production reduction, food waste, air quality, pal oil, etc. Environmental and societal factors represent some of the greatest opportunities and threats our customers face. Investors agree that maximizing shareholder returns can no longer be the primary goal of the corporation, consumers give more importance to sustainable products and services over pricing and our employees focus career choices on responsible employers.
For example, our ‘SAP Ocean Vision 2030’ program eliminates Ocean Plastic Pollution By 2030. We believe resource productivity is at the heart of the connected and Intelligent Enterprises and we aspire to a world with zero waste.
In SAP we know we need to keep on developing actions to reduce that Carbon footprint once the lockdown finishes and new normal establishes in our lives. In SAP we are taking climate change very seriously, and we believe the first way to reduce Co2 footprint is to define an easy way to measure it and track it along your end to end value chain.
In this historic moment we are in a better position to do that. We can leverage on exponential technologies like AI, Blockchain and Big Data to measure, track predict and visualize the Co2 emissions of our products and services and define actions to reduce those.
Besides, in order to reduce the Co2 footprint we need to listen to our customers and understand how their products and services are impacting the Co2 footprint. Do our customers understand their Co2 footprint? Because fighting climate change begins with understanding the CO2 footprint of a business. GHG emissions don’t just happen; they are the result of many distributed business decisions at all levels of the enterprise.
Businesses that want to minimize their CO2 footprint need the tools to analyze the impact of production, transportation, and logistics. They also need to understand how their procured materials, components, and energy contribute to the overall GHG balance of services and finished goods.
