- Businesses are increasingly responsible for answering to their clients' climate change concerns.
- When businesses prioritize climate change initiatives they can identify innovative opportunities.
- The conversation was part of Insider's event "For a Better Future: Bridging Culture, Business, and Climate," which took place on Tuesday, April 18, 2023.
Environmental and social governance is an increasingly hot button topic in corporate leadership. Businesses are searching for ways to invest in ESG initiatives, and applying ESG models to their corporate structures.
In the session "The Business of Climate and the Climate of Business" James McCall, the chief sustainability officer at HP Inc., said, "We really don't view ESG through a political lens. For us, it all really starts with customers. Our customers have been clear that they want their dollars, their choices to make a difference in the world around them."
Jennifer Steinmann, the sustainability and climate practice leader at Deloitte Global, and Janelle Meyers, the chief sustainability officer at the Kellogg Company, talked with Catherine Boudreau senior sustainability reporter at Insider, as part of "For a Better Future: Bridging Culture, Business, and Climate", presented by Deloitte.
Steinmann said, "In terms of when we talked to our clients and we recently conducted a 24-country CXO sustainability report with over 2000 executives participating in that report, and 75% of them talk about an increase in their sustainability investments."
Meyers agreed with her co-panelists and maintained that client concerns are at the forefront of business' ESG responses. Meyers said, "We definitely see there's a rise in interest in ESG, whether it be from investors, customers, consumers, employees as well."
She noted, "We don't see this as a trend. This is something we're really committed to and it's our way to be able to help contribute to better lives around our better days promised ESG strategy."
The effects of climate change on business
The panelists reflected on how different industries are uniquely impacted by climate change. McCall sees technology as an opportunity to address the impact of climate change in the tech industry. He said, "If you look at all of the printers, the new printers, the new PCs, the new peripherals that we launched in 2020, all of those contain some form of circular material or renewable material in them."
Meyers said, "As a food company, we definitely see the impacts of climate change. In particular, suppliers and growers would feel that as well too. You might have increase in drought or increase in things like fires as an example."
The speakers agreed that finding ways to mitigate the impact of climate change has opened several opportunities for collaboration between businesses.. Meyers noted, "While it is a crisis, it's also an opportunity for innovation and an opportunity for partnership. And a lot of our commitments are somewhat similar. So how can we align around whether it's energy efficiency or regenerative agriculture, reducing food waste, there's tremendous opportunities to partner all along the value chain."
Identifying opportunities and priorities in climate change
"We recently launched a solution called Greenlight Tech Solution by Deloitte, and it focuses on all aspects of decarbonization, and meets our client wherever they happen to be," Steinmann said.
Steinmann, much like McCall, pointed out that some of the technological innovations sparked by the climate crisis are close at hand. She said, "A lot of the technologies that need to support some of the changes that are happening are still in someone's garage as they're working through bringing that into the marketplace. And so we launched Green Space Tech by Deloitte, and that focuses on matching some of the earlier stage innovators with our clients in the hard tech space."
As for HP's response to climate change, McCall says they do "a full end-to-end life cycle assessment," for the company's products. After each assessment he said, "We go where we can make the biggest impact. And for us, that was engaging with our supply chain. Coming in and working hand in hand with our suppliers, helping look at things like renewable energy and manufacturing, looking at lower carbon materials."
Tackling the supply chain
Meyers acknowledged that Kellogg's largest carbon footprint is in its supply chain – from ingredient supplies to packaging suppliers. To address this, Meyers said, "So for roughly our top 80% of global suppliers, we also ask them to report through the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP, as well too, so that we have a sense of our footprint and can be able to recognize the amazing work that's happening out there."
Climate as an economic opportunity
The panelists gave some insight into how their organizations are processing the cumulative cost of climate change. Steinmann said, "We have a report called the Turning Point Report, which looks at both the economic up and downside of acting on climate change now. And so we took a 50-year view of it, but if we don't start acting now, it actually is more costly for us worldwide to the tune of 178 trillion over 50 years. The flip side is if we start to work on these issues now, there's a 43 trillion upside."
Steinmann noted the increase in "green collar" jobs will contribute to the economy. She said, "We recommend companies embed in their strategy, how they think about this, take a holistic view end-to-end, from the beginning of the life cycle to the end of the life cycle,
McCall concluded, "It goes back to why we are driving this and that customers want that in their package. They want that in the PC that they're using. They want that in the printer, whether it's energy efficiency or ensuring that every page printed is forest positive, and that you can feel good that when you're printing, it's having a positive impact on the world around you."