Sustainability & Innovation are twins

7 minutes read: OpEd " Sustainability & Innovation are twins " | Over the Horizon " AI robot boat cleans rivers" + news on BlackRock, UN Secretary General vs greenwashing & solving the hotel used soap challenge- from the desk of The Green Link's team.

Op-Ed_

[Sustainability & Innovation are twins]

Sustainability positions are among the top rising jobs, that's awesome.

According to Bloomberg “Chief sustainability officer is emerging as the hot new spot in the C-suite”. And Green-related job postings rose 30% or more last year across the EU27 and the UK, according to Linkedin Europe while in America 31 US companies have created new CSO positions last year, more than double the number recorded in any previous year, according to the Weinreb Group’s survey. 

What used to be a PR/Communication oriented role is now becoming a much more complex one. As Caspar von Blomberg head of public and social practice at Egon Zehnder remarked in a very interesting piece by the Financial Times “Appointing a CSO used to be an internal search. Someone in communications or marketing would be identified, sent to a six-week sustainability course and then appointed. That has changed entirely.”

This is actually good news overall but these changes are mainly due to the rising external pressure from investors, customers, employees, regulators and other stakeholders.

As you can’t bluff your way out of it any more, companies that are really serious about embedding sustainability as a core component of their business strategy need someone with more than just storytelling skills. You need professional that can drive business growth as well.

Sustainability as an innovation driver.

When talking about the rapid rise of CSO in earlier article by Odergs Berston, Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability Officer said that “Kering sees sustainability as a driver of innovation, creativity and value creation.” 

With a transition in focus, as related by Annemarie Meisling, Head of Sustainability at Chr. Hansen, with a shift in the role moving from “simply being housed within CSR, to satisfy a regulatory or reputational requirement, and is now contributing to product innovation”.

What we found interesting in recent internal research done by The Green Link team is that while we can now see a very large number of Chief Sustainability Officer on Linkedin, only a very small numbers of them have the dual role of Sustainability & Innovation. Magali Anderson CSIO at Holcim might be one of a kind. We hope more dual profiles will emerge soon.

Innovation & sustainability roles share similar skillsets.

I remember in the early years of last decade when Chief Innovation Officer's role took off. Companies were then looking for "visionary thinker, creative problem solver & business growth driver" professionals with the additional requirements in terms of change management, stakeholder management + storytelling skillset with a pinch of curiosity and the ability to handle risk & uncertainty.... that list rings also true for sustainability jobs description, doesn't it?

In fact all of these - plus a couple of others that would also be true for Innovation Officers - appear in the recent list drawn up by Kealy Herman - Supply Chain Climate Strategy at Google in her very interesting post Skills for Net Zero & Sustainability.

A skillset that is also confirmed by Marie-Claire Daveu CSO at Kering: “A successful CSO has to be a visionary thinker, a creative problem-solver, an operational implementer and collaborative leader,”

Sustainability leaders need to leverage Innovation leaders experience & tools.

Both roles have to manage the delicate positive tension between positive intentions & bottom-line results. Both roles rely on internal engagement & collaboration as they do not have direct control on every function. To be successful, both roles need to be seen as a trusted internal partner; someone that understand the business side of things.

With more than a decade of teachings, learnings, case-studies and experience of embedding Innovation inside companies, there is a tremendous of experience & tools that Sustainability leaders can leverage. Let's look at some of them:

• Remember that innovation is not invention: Sustainability leader should not try to re-invent the wheel - let's focus on discovering in other geographies or industries what works (best-practices, technology solutions) and apply in-house. Not every sustainability challenge needs a technical response - sometime the answer can be as simple as switching suppliers or changing some internal process.
• Beware corporate antibodies: Most innovation projects - especially when sourced outside the organisation - fail due to corporate antibodies, a classic reaction to derail implementation so as preserve the status-quo. Always position the initiative as addressing an opportunity. Going to a circular economy model helped a Belgium Telecommunication provider drastically reduce their Operating Expenses in just 5 years on their internet top-box.
• Translate to financial ROI: Every sustainability goal should have a financial ROI target or at the very least a financial valuation. When sustainability initiatives get translated to Euros or Dollars, everyone can understand the importance to the organisation. Carbon already has a market price but you need to also think about things like waste tax savings, shipping cost reduction and others depending on the focus of your sustainability initiatives.
• Helping people generate idea: Very much like you can't dictate innovation from the top (only the intent), embark your staff on a cross-function collaborative design approach. Provide a methodology & supporting online tools to facilitate the submission of ideas.
• Engage & make heroes of your staff: Put a regular spotlight on the idea generators - and not just on large initiative, adopt a proper "positive media attention" balance between large, medium & small projects. This will make everyone proud and confirms that anyone can play a role & contribute
• Design experiments & iterate rapidly: If you are really serious about implementing changes, always keep in mind that the cost of planning is always higher than the cost of experimentation. So, first think big (the desired full-scale change) and start small with pilots on dedicated topics or issues. As more modest resources & financial means will be required, you won't trigger a large corporate antibodies reaction as well.

Call to Action

If you'd like to speed up the sustainability transformation journey of your company, here's a simple "to-do" : leverage some of the above mentioned Chief Innovation Officers tactics, starting next week and let us know how did it went :)

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Like what you're reading? Find out more about The Green Link's Sustainability as a Service offering - helping companies go from strategic intent to positive impact leveraging Artificial Intelligence sensing engines & our 1,260+ operational best-practices & cleantech technology. Access our website for more details.

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Over the Cleantech horizon_ 

[ AI-enabled robotic boat cleans up water plastic trash before it reaches the ocean]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is huge environmental issue that needs to be fixed but it didn’t magically appear from nowhere. According to the UN, 95% of plastic pollution found in seas gets there via 10 major rivers, eight of which are in Asia.

Collecting plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean is critical to ensure this situation doesn’t get worst. But how can we do it efficiently, relentlessly and at scale? Enter ClearbotNeo, an AI-enabled robotic boat cleans up water plastic trash, designed by the Open Ocean Engineering team led by Sidhant Gupta & Utkarsh Goel.

A clever cleaning bot, this 3-meters long, solar-powered floating garbage collector can remove up to a metric ton of trash per day for recycling or disposal. The onboard AI imaging system can identify what type of trash is collected with associated GPS locations to find out where are the pollution sources. Its features make it ideal for harbor, canal and river use. Additional details on ClearbotNeo can be found here & on the company’s website.

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In the news_

[ BlackRock warns it will vote against more climate resolutions this year ]

Spotted in the Financial Times – “BlackRock has warned that it will not support most shareholder resolutions on climate change this year because they have become too extreme or too prescriptive”. 

So, what happened to the world leading asset manager’s 2020 perspective that climate risk is investment risk? 

Apparently, it seems that with the recent economic shockwaves from both Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, BlackRock doesn’t believe that pushing more climate proposals (for example stop financing fossil fuel companies, force them to decommission assets or set absolute targets for companies on reducing emissions) would be a wise long-term move… 

To which one could argue there will be no jobs nor profits on a dead planet… so think again assets managers – you’re actively sawing off the branch we are all sitting on...

[ UN Secretary-General warns we cannot afford greenwashing ]

The United Nations recently launched a new task-force – the Net-Zero Expert Group – to develop stronger & clearer standards for net-zero emissions pledges for entities like businesses, investors, cities and regions—and speed up their implementation.

“Global emissions must decrease by 45 per cent by 2030, starting now. Or rather yesterday (…) The world is in a race against time. We cannot afford slow movers, fake movers or any form of greenwashing” warned António Guterres in its message to the Net-Zero Expert Group.

Key topics to be addressed by the group include:

• Current standards and definitions for setting net-zero targets;
• Credibility criteria used to assess the objectives, measurement and reporting of net- zero pledges;
• Processes for verification and accounting of progress towards net-zero commitments and reported decarbonization plans; and
• A roadmap to translate standards and criteria into international and national level regulations

More details on its speech coverage can be found here. Additional information are available on the group members list and the objectives & scope of work of the group in this PDF document.

[ Hotels: a second life for used soaps ]

Great review in The Hustle on the potential second life  solution for the hotel used soaps environmental issue. Here are some key highlights:

• Soap is the single most-utilized amenity at hotel chains: 86% of guests who stay at a hotel for 1-2 nights use it. 
• In normal times, hotels go through ~3.3m bars of soap every day.
• The hospitality industry generates an estimated ~199 M Tons of solid waste per year.
• An estimated 3B people worldwide still don’t have access to hand-washing facilities with soap.

Companies like Clean the World, Ecosoap & Diversey tackles this issue by providing “as a service” the collection and repurposing of the used soap for a fee. Collected products are used to create new soap bar that are then provided to populations in needs of clean hygiene products. Circular economy at its best - definitely a best practice we're adding to our library.

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If like WWF, Groupe BEL, Novo Nordisk , L'Oréal, HBC Nantes you'd like to go from strategic intent to positive impact faster, reach out to us. 

The Green Link helps companies move from Sustainability strategic intent to positive impact enabling real financial, social & environmental ROI through proprietary AI sensing engines and a library of 1,260+ best-practices and clean technologies. 

If you know companies that want to tackle their environmental footprint and move faster to positive impact bypassing the white page syndrome, send them our details: contact@thegreenlink.co and let’s have a chat.