About this ATALK
This insightful panel of APLANET Summit 2023 focuses on the role of accurate, transparent, and traceable data collection within businesses, its implications on decision-making processes, stakeholder and regulatory pressure, and the significance of ESG data.
The conversation also emphasizes the importance of technology in achieving transparency and the necessity of consumer education for sustainable business practices.
Key Discussion Points:
- The role of harmonized data and the complexities involved in creating such datasets.
- The importance of accurate and traceable data for businesses to withstand pressure from stakeholders and regulators.
- Utilizing data to make informed business decisions, exemplified by the scenario of a factory affected by changing climate conditions.Significance of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) data for long-term business sustainability.
- The role of comparable, transparent data in building corporate trust.
- The significance of providing accurate information to consumers, aided by technology, to help them make informed choices.
- The need for businesses to combat greenwashing through credible data.
Speakers:
🔹 Ed Packshaw – Director Of Sustainability & Governance
🔹 Francisca Shearman de Macedo – Founder at United to Remake – Upcycling & Rethink
🔹 Mariana Gramunt – CEO & Co-founder of T_NEUTRAL
🔹Andrea Ruzo – Managing Director of ECOALF Foundation
Transcript
You can find the full transcript of their conversation below.
| Joana Alves | We are going to discuss how can companies address environmental issues and escalate their businesses at the same time. I have the pleasure to have with me Andrea Ruzo from Ecoalf Foundation from Spain. Welcome Andrea. Next to Andrea, I have Mariana Gramunt, also from Spain, CEO at T-Neutral. Next to Andrea, I’ll have Ed Packshaw, Consultant from the UK and finally Francisca Shearman from Portugal, the CEO at United to Remake. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m sure you have very insightful inputs that can enrich the conversation around this topic and starting with Andrea. Andrea, you are the Managing Director at Ecoalf Foundation and as I don’t know if everyone knows but Ecoalf is a very famous Spanish brand with a sustainable business model and you create fashion projects from recycled progress from the ocean. My question is how was this project of Ecoal Foundation born and what type of initiatives to address? And on the same time regarding echo off itself, how can a profitable and scalable business have a positive impact at the same time? |
| Andrea Ruzo | Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting us today and for the kind introduction it’s always it’s always really beautiful to hear such good messages talking about Ecoalf, for those for those who doesn’t know, Ecoalf and equal foundation if you want. I think it’s not working. Okay now. Yes. Well, as I was saying, thank you very much for inviting us and for the introduction about the Qual Foundation. If you want, I will do a super quick introduction on both organizations because they are really close together, although they’re independent. Ecoalf is Spanish sustainable fashion brand that was born in 2009 with the goal of changing one of, well, the second most polluting industry in the world that is fashion. So, as I’m pretty sure quite a lot of you are aware, the fast fashion model, it’s bringing our world to a crisis. We are in the mid of an environmental crisis and the. The fashion industry is a huge responsible for that. So in 2009 Equal was born with a goal of with a with aiming to stop using natural resources as they were unlimited in the world. No? At that point of time using recycling materials, recycled materials where was an option. So the the founder of Ecoalf started traveling around the world to look for alternative materials. And at some point of of time in 2014, we, Ecoalf was using in one of these recycled materials fishing Nets. So there was this conversation between somebody from the fishing sector and Javier who is the founder of Ecoalf about the huge quantity of waste that was in in the ocean. So Javier went there with the fishermen, they started going fishing together once a week. And he got impressed by the huge quantity of waste that was in the ocean. So that’s why the Ecoalf foundation was born with the goal of cleaning up the oceans and also giving a second life to marine waste. So the connection between the two organizations in this case is because part of the waste that is collected in front of bottom of the sea, the PT bottles, they are introduced in one of the collections Ecoalf is doing. So this is just an example of how first of all a company that has the sustainability in its DNA has to look for alternative solutions and look for on how the world is evolving and the natural problems that there is to try to introduce new materials, but especially trying to connect the dots and look a worker in a in an ecosystem not with different industries for instance we were talking before Ecoalf is working with quite a lot of people in in this room because we know that alone you cannot actually make the change. So for us one of the big challenges and I’m talking about Ecoalf now is the fact of being a changemaker in an industry that. Usually works against the environment, no. So we were born to prove that doing things differently it’s possible and that we have to do it might seem at the beginning and advantage. Because you are the only one, no. And you are, everybody’s looking at you because you are making it happen. But at the end this will be only we will only make a change if the whole industry is working in the same direction. Also if you ask me for the main challenge for us, we’ll be to stop being the change maker and to start working in an industry that altogether is looking for sustainability, to be honest. |
| Joana | Yes, that’s it’s very interesting, especially in the fashion industry which is one of the most polluting industries in the world. In order to be a systemic change, you need to involve all stakeholders from producers but also consumers, right? Because the cut make waste model doesn’t cut anymore, so we need to change the mentalities and give new purposes to close by remaking them. You were using them so. |
| Andrea | Yeah and as I was saying the challenges they evolved because of the beginning using recycled materials seem like something innovative and it was at that point of time at the beginning they were not recycled materials that had the good quality and that we could do nice designs with them. Actually Ecoalf since the beginning has designed over 500 different fabrics that were not allowed in that we’re not in the market in 2009 when we were born. And nowadays the innovations and the challenges are others because we do have recycled materials of good quality. But what are we going to do with that once the clothes are are used how they how are we going to prove to the consumers that a different sustainable, a different consuming model is necessary that we cannot consume and buy clothes every month. Because it makes no sense. So all of that. |
| Joana | Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I invite everyone to read your non financial report that you published voluntarily on your website. It’s truly inspiring and I think it’s the living proof of a company that’s really embeds the sustainability strategy into the business strategy. So I think it’s a very inspiring reading, if anyone wants to follow this recommendation. It’s really a reference for me in terms of what is a real sustainable company with a sustainable business model as its core. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. And continue to talk about the climate issues around the fashion industry, which is one of the most pollutant industries in the world. Mariana was brave enough to be an entrepreneur and you are the CEO at T-Neutral, which addresses this problem and especially the calculation of carbon textile footprint. So can you explain us what’s the work of T-Neutral and what type of solutions you offer? |
| Mariana Gramunt | Sure. First of all, for you to know T-Neutral is the first platform for the textile industry to be able to measure, reduce and take responsibility of the end of life of their textile output, which is what we call the textile footprint. The textile footprint is a metric we developed because we realized there was a lack of a way to call. An industry issue which was textile waste, But textile waste is called textile waste. When it’s already waste, how can we tackle it to eliminate waste and have it turn into a resource? So in order to do that, we said well, we in the carbon world, we have the carbon footprint. In the plastic world, we’re starting to use the plastic footprint to measure the outputs of such materials or gasses. We need as an industry of vertical, specific metric to help us measure the amount of textile we output throughout every operational year to be able to know where we stand, reduce it, make it more circular and at the end of the day and ultimately take responsibility of its end of life. So that’s what we do. We are the first platform to propose a measure reduce, contribute model for the textile industry. But this started way back when we were a fashion brand, because we were a fashion brand like in a previous life. My sister and I, we are cofounders and we had our own sustainable fashion brand back in 2016. And we had it up until we stumbled upon textile waste figures, like global textile waste figures when you as a brand realized that we output around 90 million tons of textile waste every year and 90% of it, almost 90% of it end up in a landfill. So basically the products we were selling were trash basically. And that is a very tough realization when you’re a designer, when you’re a brand that regardless of how sustainable my product is, it’s going to end up in a landfill. So that made us think: Are we contributing to the solution or are we contributing to the problem by selling more products year on year? Right? So we stopped, we stopped and we thought about where we stood and we decided we are very extreme people, my sister and I, So we basically closed the brand. We shut it down and we decided to leverage all we knew about the textile industry, all we knew about applying circular economy and sustainable principles to the business, which is very hard to come up with a solution not only applicable to ourselves as an individual brand, but with a collective mindset for the industry to take it and make it their own. And that’s what we did. We came up with the textile footprint as a way to have a common goal, a common enemy, a common villain, right? For the industry to go against that goal, because I think we’re all very… I think it there’s a consensus around carbon footprint and there’s a consensus about the net zero waste, net zero goals. Sorry. And in the industry, in the textile industry, we needed that common villain, that one villain we all went against, to be able to tackle the textile waste problem. So do we came up with a textile footprint. So we developed the methodology for any textile producer to be able to measure and trace the amount of textile they output as a funny, a fun fact, we’re working with them. They’re one of the first companies that said, yes, let’s try it out. So now we’re working with several brands to be able to measure the textile footprint and also to connect them to the other side of the problem, which are the projects at the front lines of waste in the global S we. We already have an ecological and social crisis around textile waste. We all know. I think we’re familiar with the landfills in Kenya and Chile and all those places receiving the textile waste we’re sending. So projects there need our help and they are somewhat connected to the industry outputting the textile waste, right. So we need to be able to connect them and for the producers who are outputting material to be able to take responsibility of its end of life by contributing to those projects, actually fixing the problem that it’s already there. So we’re connecting them by creating the first textile credit platform. Just as you offset your carbon footprint, we want the textile industry to be able to be offset or contribute through textile credits to those projects doing the reverse of their activity, cleaning those landfills. And building local circular ecosystems in those places where it’s most needed. So by doing that, we’re actually leveraging also the potential of technology and data to create that ecosystem of coresponsibility, connecting all the different textile players through this model of measure, reduce and take responsibility. So that’s what we’re doing right now. |
| Joana | That’s amazing. Especially in such a difficult topic as it is the fashion industry that involves a lot of different topics even in the value chain and you mentioned as well the that there’s has to be a core responsibility between consumers value chain and also producers. We need to have a shift in our mentality and shift from the tech make waste model to repurpose our clothes and reuse them, remake them. So that’s a very, very, very amazing project that I hope that will have good outcomes. For sure. And now shifting my question completely. To talking about Net 0 regulations, Ed is a sustainability consultant from the UK. You have more than 12 years of experience, you are specialized in carbon accounting and environmental management, and you have an announcement because you’ve just started a new role at the head of ESG Strategy and reporting at Simply Sustainable. Which is the real case fastest growing ESG Consulting. Congratulations for that. And you know that mandatory climate risk and CO2 emissions disclosure is a priority for companies such as regulation like the TCFD in the UK or with the new CSRD in the European Union, and this can sometimes be very complex and ever overwhelming for companies to deal to deal with this, and for sure there’s a lot of work for consultancies such as yourself. So my question is, with your experience advising companies both in the UK and the European Union, what advice would you give to them regarding this climate risk and CO2 emissions disclosures? |
| Ed Packshaw | Yeah thanks so much for having us and and and great about these two amazing projects for quite humbled as a consultant sitting here. Yeah it’s it’s it’s very complicated a lot of the stuff where it seems really complicated and it seems very difficult to understand it can feel quite overwhelming because it’s quite new and I guess first of all just level set the the the room in case you you don’t understand what the all these million different acronyms and words and phrases mean. TCFD is the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure. So it’s about climate risk and opportunity and CSRD is the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive. Hopefully most of you should know a bit about that. They are mandatory or will be mandatory very soon. So if you didn’t know that and you’re one of the companies that’s going to be mandated to report on them, then it’s time to get moving. And if you’re private, they’re also coming soon regardless of where you are in the UK and Europe or around the world. And you know TCFD is a really useful framework for organizations particularly I mean in the UK it’s mandatory for the largest public companies and private companies, insurers, banks and that sort of thing. So it’s a really useful way for organizations to understand what their climate risks are how to find opportunities to exploit them standardized process that can help you communicate to your investors, into your wider stakeholders in a way that helps them understand what you’re doing to approach these types of problems and for a big multinational company it can seem really, really overwhelming to understand where to start. CSRD itself is a bit more holistic, it includes more social and environmental metrics. But both of them the commonality I think is that there’s a big emphasis on board leadership and taking ownership at a senior level. And that is a common trend across a lot of regulations globally is that starting from the top pushing it down. But realistically reporting whether you’re being forced to do it by the EU or the UK or voluntarily as you’ve done here is really, really important. You know. It’s important for a lot of different reasons but I’ll give you an analogy to explain it. This is a ridiculous analogy. OK. So just indulge me for a little bit of time so you don’t know this but I am a professional footballer, right? And this season I’ve scored more goals than Ronaldo and Messi and Ben Zimmer and Harland all together, OK? Thank you. Thank you. Right. Obviously, that’s absolutely ridiculous, right? You can go onto Google, you can look at my name. If I had a Wikipedia page, it would say I’ve played no games professionally. I’m not a particularly good footballer and I’m lying. But from a business perspective, it’s very easy for a company to say that we’re the greenest in the world and we’re our sustainable business. But it’s really, really difficult for people like yourselves to actually work out. Whether that’s actually true or not, it’s essentially this sort of greenwashing thing that we’re looking at. Oddly enough, the solution for proving that Ed Packshaw is a terrible footballer and the businesses are green or not green, is exactly the same. It’s objective, transparent reporting. So in the future, what we’ll see is that when you go into Wikipedia, alongside the year a company was founded, the number of people, it’s market cap. There’ll also be emissions reductions, diversity scores, government scores and all those things. And it’s about creating that transparent information that allows stakeholders to make decisions. Theoretically, and I’m I’m strongly believe that most people will make a decision that’s better for the environment, the planet or society rather than choosing a more evil thing to invest in. But if they have transparent data then they can do that if they want to. And you know globally if we sort of zoom out a little bit, all the regulation is, is about this sort of antigreenwashing process and driving companies to be more transparent and more open with what they’re doing and you know Michael Bloomberg said that transparency improves markets and it’s very, very clear that the more information you give to your to your stakeholders the the the better the decision making they can have And and the reason is because these metrics whether you’re measuring them or not, these metrics are having an impact on your business and sometimes they can be very difficult and require some, some quite creative ways of doing things like textile footprints or or or more standardized things like carbon footprints, but whether you’re measuring them or not they that they are having an impact on your business. So starting that measuring process or continuing to improve it is really, really important and and and these do have a financial impact on your business as well. So companies that invest in, in in improving that ESG performance around about 60% of them depending on the date that you look at show clear financial performance improvement as well. So the data is pretty strong in the fact that if you do this and you do it well that that that your company is going to become more resilient. I don’t think it takes a genius to work out that if you’re looking at your your risks in a more holistic way you can find some more ways of doing things and whether you want to wait for the regulators to force you to do this or or whether you want to do it yourself. It’s it’s kind of up to you but the opportunity for organizations is to improve their suite of reporting as much as possible and there are lots and lots of different ways to do that lots of different systems. It’s not just TCFD or CSRD but the other ones are probably coming as well. SBTI the science based targets initiative is a big framework in the UK and in Europe if you look at the EU Green Deal or EU K’s green finance strategy, You’ll see lots of references to science based targets, so aligning your business to those science based targets, the process you submit your targets and it gets independently verified. So it it adds a layer of objectivity and standardization that reduces the chances that you’re making up targets that you could never achieve and then you have to show that you can financially deliver them. And that’s really, really important for particularly for your investors who want to know that if you’re going net 0 by 2050, how are you going to do it, who’s going to do it and how are you going to pay for it. And these are the types of questions that the companies are asking today. So you know for me I think that the number one mistake I see from companies and the advice I’d give to them is kind of looking at reporting as a kind of out facing thing exclusively. It’s something that we just have to do for compliance and it’s mandatory and you know reporting. For reporting sakes. So that the advice is yes it is extremely overwhelming and when you look at the hundreds of different acronyms for I kind of wish they’d just stopped naming them through acronyms and just gave them some more interesting names. But the reality is that most companies will need a multi framework approach. Whether it be regular, whether it be mandatory or not. So using these frameworks to the maximum as possible will help you understand where those risks are, where the opportunities are and where your business is going to go in the future. And you can start to set values and direction and targets around that that allow you to make better decisions for the future of your business. |
| Joana | That’s perfect and it’s important to set those values prior to choosing which voluntary standards or even regulations to report because you need to know where you’re at in order to know where you’re going. So yeah, thanks. Thanks for your most valuable inputs. And now I’ll change to Francisca. Francisca, you have a very inspiring path because you used to be the sustainability manager of a bank, a famous bank. And then you completely shift your life and now you’re an entrepreneur. You’re the CEO at United Remake, based in Lisbon. It’s a circularity and upcycling startup. So basically you address such a difficult topic for companies, which is waste, and you transform their waste into upcycling products like the ones, the beautiful products that we saw outside. So can you tell us a bit about your journey and why did you decide to create a startup to address such a difficult topics for companies, which is climate waste and what to do with it? |
| Francisca Shearman | Thank you so much APLANET for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be here. Well, I used to be or I am a CSR specialist, but I always always loved the environmental part. And the innovation, social innovation, that was always my passion. In my previous life. I never, never could do nothing about waste because it was never a priority. And one thing that I found out after is that the majority of the companies dealing with environmental unfortunately and even more with trash, it’s not a priority. So what we realized is that there’s a gap. And there’s space for a company like us like United to Remake, to support companies in this path. So we are a circle economy startup. We do four things: we collect trash, we transform trash, we do consultancy majorly on waste, and we resell cycling products. Like those that you saw outside, we represent one of the most well I can say that because they are not mine just I’m just ambassador. But we represent the best cycling companies around the world like Ocean Soul or Shaku or other companies. What we want to show we have a we we truly believe that awareness is very important to touch each other hearts as customers or and even as companies because we have a lot of things to do. We have a great a great great problem the circle area rates of raw materials is is tragic Actually we are talking about 7.8 when the desirable one should be 17. So we have a lot to run ou… We say that we like to transform dress in sexy things and appealing things because this is a team and we need to address in other companies the question, there’s opportunity here and and that’s why we exist. That’s why we are progressing. |
| Joana | Thank you so much, Francisca. And I love the way that you treat trash as a new gold and you see value in the trash and that you transform it into beautiful products. That’s the one that you brought. So congratulations and now shifting a little bit the topic because we are a tech company and we are strong believers that technology can enhance the sustainability agenda. And starting with Andrea. Andrea, what’s the importance of innovation and technology when creating and scaling Ecoalf products? |
| Andrea | Well, in this case for us, innovation and technology was like the base of everything since the very beginning because as I was saying before, we started in a sector in which doing the same, it was not a possibility. So innovation and finding out new ways of transforming the sector was the only way out. Innovation as well, it changes for us. It has changed along the the years what at the beginning was innovative for us which was designing new materials, looking for to use those recycled materials to produce a high quality and high design garments. It is still one of our priorities, but there are many others because we realized as far, as long as we were evolving, we realized that there are many other challenges in the industry and that we have to keep innovating in each one of them. For instance, as we were talking before, if you ask me about the main challenges for for us as a as a company will be looking for alternative materials, but especially as Mariana was saying before like what are we going to do with the clothes once we are not going to use them anymore because at the end we have a huge problem of of waste in in the industry and that can only be done and she can explain much better than than me. That’s true technology because technology is the our ally in measuring and monitoring all that also in the fashion industry are many other challenges but, for instance like trying to also talking about materials, but for instance developing materials that can be that can be recycled as well because of the at the end for us now we have just launched the first collection that is 100% recycled and 100% recyclable which is perhaps for you think that this is this is super common but the truth is that not most of the clothing they cannot be recyclable. Also things like tracing the materials where they come from. So all this if it’s not for technology, it is impossible for us to make sure that. So definitely innovation, it’s a challenge that is every date and that evolves along the way and it goes hand in hand with technology as an ally, yeah. |
| Joana | Perfect. Thank you. And moving on to Mariana. Mariana, you are a tech company because you developed a software as a surface platform to address textile producers to tackle climate waste. So in your opinion what is the importance of data for them to measure reduce enough sets the amount of textile output from their activity? |
| Mariana | We like to well data is the cornerstone of what we do. Basically like five years ago textile material was a raw material. Now data around textile material is a raw material and we see data as there’s a the main challenge around data is fluency, basically. Everyone uses different ways to call. Very common things. So it’s very complicated to have common sources of data, to have them talk to each other, to basically harmonize the industry’s information, to be able to develop, to set goals, to develop solutions and to monitor those solutions in a cohesive way. So for us, that is one of the main challenges. We are dealing every day with massive intakes of data around textile output. Materials, compositions, destinations, uses of textile, ways, different amounts of data. And it’s very hard to connect the dots with the infrastructure and the ecosystem we have right now. And if we don’t, if we’re not fluent, if our data is not fluent, if it doesn’t flow, we don’t have an ecosystem. That’s what it is. And we need the industry to be an ecosystem. It’s an industry historically very individualist in a way. I’m sorry to say, but it is. Everyone’s doing things their own way. It’s like a Wild, Wild West kind of situation. But now if we have structural problems, we have collective problems. We need collective goals and in order to tackle them appropriately, we need an ecosystem that’s connected through data. And for us that’s the main challenge right now. |
| Joana | And also harmonized data, which is the biggest challenge, right? Yeah, it’s a hard work, very hard work. And the same question to add from a consultant’s point of view, what is the importance of companies collecting accurate and traceable data to its stand the pressure from stakeholders and regulators? |
| Ed | I mean if you are an SME you, I’m sure you’re focusing on two or three business lines, yeah and it depends on the business line you are a good company on. You will have several regulation or requests from clients. Yeah that might affect your future demand in the sense sustainability will be an issue to try to identify the future demand. All of us as clients, all the big corporates, as clients of SMEs, yeah, will request some better behavior on sustainability criterion factors. So for those who are part of an SME, yeah, even if they’re medium or small, I’m sure they have clients, big corporates sometimes or they’re trying to get funding from a bank or an investor, all these clients, all these financers will analyze the SME sustainability point of view because it will be a request from the regulation. So it will be a kind of trickle down for everybody. Yeah, Apart from that, you might realize that sustainability is a good way to behave and also a good way to define future strategies because the man will be more linkage to sustainability activities in the future than today because clients requested. So you might consider this a part of your strategy, not the unique issue, but part of it important one. So those, but one of it, yeah? So even if you are part of a sector that have a strong regulation really. For example, a chemistry that the the regulation now requests really good behavior, environmental issues, several requests. Or you are part of a… you are a provider of a big corporate or you at the end get finance or insurance for a financial entity. You might have this request from your ecosystem, Yeah, of your environment. Or you might consider that this is the future and also consider it so from my point of view as part of AFIr that we tackle this issue as part of financial or economic activity and just the only way we that our rationale is useful or try to explain it. I think we might consider that everybody might find a way to be more sustainable and it would be better for them in the future. Yeah, it’s has been well put already. It’s essential, you know it’s it’s it’s about making good decisions, right. It’s very, very difficult to make a good decision from a business perspective without some kind of data backing it up, you know, otherwise you know and even as you were saying before about setting targets, company values, goals, all those types of things. Without good data your group of people sitting around the room talking about feelings and emotions which doesn’t sound like a great way to run a business for me. You know as as passionate as I am about the same problem but you know it’s all about making those better decisions. The textile footprint again is a really good example of creating something and. You know for companies a large scale it’s it’s essential and I’ll give you a little example. So imagine you run a company that has a factory by a river and it’s 50 years old and for the last sort of 45 years the river flooded once every let’s say five years. And now with the changing climate, it’s flooding every two to three years, right? So you got a problem that you can’t get your produce to your customers, you’re having disruptions in your supply chain, clear risk, and you want to make a good decision about what to do. Should you buy sandbags? Should you build a wall? Should you move the factory to a different place and you need good data behind that. Good climate risk, scenario analysis, good understanding of your carbon footprint, emissions, all those types of things, plus all the business data around it to make that decision. Now, imagine you went to your company invest the day or you went to speak to your stakeholders and you stood up in front of them and you said we’re going to move the factory 100 meters down the road without any data behind it and without any metrics, without any reasoning, without any financial performance scenarios, nothing like that. I mean I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t lost in that position for very long the investors will probably vote you out and so you know it’s it’s about helping companies make better decisions and creating something that that. You know as we said it’s it’s comparable to others that allows wider stakeholders to make decisions and the importance of f those, you know, of those decisions is not just through the regulatory pressure. And a lot of companies, I see a lot of companies who think: Oh well we’ve got to report, we’ve got to do this because people are telling us to do it. It’s probably the wrong way around to look at it in my opinion. Understanding that that these types of metrics, these data points whether they be carbon footprint data or your gender diversity metrics, quality indexes, governance scores, whatever they are ESG scoring. There are lots of different ways to to to measure yourself. But you know to try and put that in a position of understanding that these metrics allow you to make better decisions which improve the long term resiliency and sustainability of your business. If you’re speaking in those types of terms to your investors about your financial performance or your ESG performance, then you’re probably credible and it has to be accurate. And so for me, going back to my Ronaldo story, the corporate trust is pretty low right now. I think most people don’t really believe that large corporate companies are doing what they say they’re doing. That’s that’s changing. But you know, that’s my opinion. The solution to this distrust is is comparable transparent data. So you need that data, you need to make good decisions. There’s a lot of it. You know CSRD might you might have 600 different metrics that you need to implement. So there are lots of solutions like like APLANET and and things like that which will help you kind of move away from just the measuring and into the into the embedding of sustainability into your company which is the really key goal for organizations. Many of you around here probably either are working in companies or with companies that have done some measurement or kind of on that journey already. But the real key success is embedding it and making sure that everybody in the company understands what they need to do from a sustainability point of view and that all begins with good data. I can often ask the company one question and understand where they are on their journey, which is to walk up to any person in the company and ask them what are they doing to be more sustainable in their job today. And most companies today will go, Oh well, the CEO did a net zero plan and we’re going green and everything’s wonderful and Gretta did a talk, right? And everything’s fantastic. But a really well organized company will say, well, I’m the head of payroll. So we occupy about 8% of the of the company’s carbon footprint. We’re going to hire five people in the next, you know, three years. We hope at least three of them come from different backgrounds because we know that our team is quite similar in the way that it thinks. We’ve got to put the following Non Financial policies in place and if we do all of that and we achieve our targets, we’ll all get bonuses. That’s an organization that’s working together in a business focused way using data to measure performance, to set targets and all those things. Without it you just you know making decisions in the wind and then you see these fluctuations and we’ve seen it a lot, you know in 2018 when all CEO’s around the world started making big Net Zero promises and will be necessary by 2050 and everything’s going to be wonderful. And then they kind of left the company and somebody else had to pick it up, but now it actually has to actually happen. And without that good data then it’s impossible to start making those decisions properly. And what you’ll find is that investors and wider stakeholders will pick up on this pretty quickly. Investors are very, very savvy to these thoughts, the things they understand that these metrics have an impact on your company’s performance. So you’re risking your own credibility without bringing in these types of data to support your decision making. So yeah, it’s absolutely essential for businesses that you really can’t run it without it. |
| Joana | Exactly. You need to measure in order to improve, because if you don’t know where you’re at, you don’t know where you’re going. So it’s fundamental just for transparency, greenwashing and improving our business. |
| Ed | And after a while what gets measured gets managed is the classic adage. So once you start measuring it, you better do something about it. So it’s a good place to start. |
| Joana | Exactly, exactly. And now moving on to Francisca, what is the importance of ESG data and technology when monitoring the ways that is being carried out by companies that you advise and and this way that then is going to be transforming to a sapling products? |
| Francisca | I would add to my colleagues one word credibility, because I don’t know if that already happens with you, but in Portugal it’s normal. I sometimes put something in the bin but I never know where is going to. But it’s going when and when what is happening. So I truly believe that technology is very important to the customer, to the final customer. We need to improve this knowledge there and give information to the customer of the flow that the trash is falling. Whatever is, if we’re talking about bottles or clothes or whatever, it’s very relevant to create that technology and it’s not difficult, right? We just have to have will to do it. And the second part of it is that we are in a industry that prevails, greenwashing, and if we don’t have data, if we are not accurate, if we are not able to audit the figures and the numbers that we are providing to our customers, we don’t exist. So that’s the reason why we love so much APLANET, because they build a tool that allow us to measure and give the proper information to our customers and to the companies that give us their trust. |
| Joana | Thank you so much, Francisca. It’s the main purpose of our technology is to make companies safe, time and resources and become more efficient in their sustainability management. |
| Andrea | I don’t know if I can add something because I think it’s super interesting. Because we are talking about data for us as organizations, which is important, but also what you said for consumers because also at the end companies are people and our goal is to communicate what we are doing and the importance of what we are doing to people in a way they can as well understand and realize how important is their their decisions, their buying decisions. If you decide to buy for one company or to choose this transport. But if you don’t have the data, it’s hard as a consumer to understand the real impact of what of your decision. That’s why I think that’s that’s as well very important. |
| Joana | Exactly, great comment. And I think this was a wonderful note to went on. And thank you so much for your most valuable inputs and for sharing your inspiring projects. So please give them a round of applause. Thank you. |
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