digital technology Archives - Zureli

Search for any green Service

Find green products from around the world in one place

Window cleaning

Singapore Safety Glass

4 Stepping Stones to Sustainability for New Construction Firms

Posted on March 15, 2024 by dishanth

4 Stepping Stones to Sustainability for New Construction Firms

The construction industry has a well-deserved reputation for being an environmental polluter. It has gotten away with ungreen practices because the other sectors are just as dirty, if not more. However, climate change has made the world less tolerant of environmentally unsound organizations. Governments have joined the sustainability movement, so the writing is on the wall for maladaptive enterprises.

Many firms are slow to adopt greener practices, but the influx of startups can accelerate the sector’s sustainability transformation. New design-build firms, general contracting businesses, and subcontractors are better positioned to embrace eco-friendly initiatives.

The corporate culture is still a blank canvas, so start fresh with these four tips.

Go Digital

Technological adoption and sustainability go hand in hand. Outdated methods and crude tools limit your ability to overcome your blind spots and find opportunities to operate more sustainably. Investing in digital technologies is necessary to address your pain points and streamline your processes.

Which innovations should you prioritize? There are numerous excellent candidates:

Mobile devices and messaging tools can harness cloud computing’s potential to promote remote resource access and foster interconnectedness. The interplay between these technologies will break down the usual communication barriers, making it easy to keep everybody on the same page.
Computer-aided design, building information modeling, and construction management programs streamline processes. They have unique functions but digitize data so you can review information more granularly. Analytics programs can reveal insights to solve problems that harm the environment, like surplus inventory and rework.
LiDAR and camera-equipped drones, wearable Internet of Things devices, and telematics systems can collect data on almost anything. They can help you precisely and accurately scan the landscape to minimize disturbance on existing ecosystems, quantify worker performance to identify and correct wasteful habits and keep tabs on equipment usage.
Bots automate tedious tasks, allowing you to conduct construction work more efficiently. Robotic arm 3D printers and bricklayers can help you complete projects faster and decrease material waste.

Construction has been slow to innovate primarily due to employee hesitance. Feeling intimidated by innovative solutions and receiving inadequate technical support are some of the usual baggage crews carry. Budget for training and continuous learning, as technologically savvy workers feel comfortable with innovations and can maximize their tools to run your business more sustainably.

Be Circular

Circularity promotes using renewable, reclaimed or recycled materials, reusing or repurposing items, recovering salvageable materials, and designing structures with easily recoverable components. Such practices aim to leave the remaining virgin resources untouched because logging, mining and quarrying have considerable environmental consequences. These extraction methods destroy natural habitats, displace wildlife, eradicate biodiversity, pollute soil, water and air, and reduce natural carbon sinks.

Considering the planet’s finite resources, the construction industry has to switch from the linear to the circular model sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the sector will face crippling supply chain disruptions, which can result in project delays and loss of profits. How do you join the circular economy?

Buy reclaimed, recycled and repurposed construction supplies: Try doing so whenever you can to help conserve virgin resources.
Choose vendors carefully: Circular suppliers engaging in unethical practices practice greenwashing, not sustainability. Exercise due diligence to ensure your supply chain partners are as green as they claim to be to avoid enriching environmentally damaging businesses.
Select used equipment over new products: Purchasing pre-owned tools, machines and vehicles is sustainable because they’re already around. Ordering brand-new assets incentivizes manufacturers to build more products, potentially using newly extracted raw materials. Plus, pre-owned models save you money because used items cost less, less downtime is necessary for training and replacement parts are usually cheaper.
Put a premium on prefabrication: Prefab construction minimizes waste since it’s easier to control material usage when building components off-site in a factory-controlled environment. More importantly, construction modules lend themselves to deconstruction, simplifying dismantling and material recovery for reuse or resale.

Emit Less

Decarbonize your operations at every turn. Switching from diesel to electric is one of the best ways to do so. Powering your assets with nothing but electricity eliminates air and noise pollution on-site.

Running on electricity doesn’t automatically translate to fewer greenhouse gas emissions. In 2023, fossil fuels produced 60% of the electricity generated in the United States. The nation’s power mix will be cleaner once green hydrogen becomes ubiquitous, so operating electric construction assets will be even more eco-friendly in the future.

If upgrading to electric equipment doesn’t make sense for you, adopting renewable diesel is the next best thing. This alternative fuel is chemically identical to fossil-derived diesel, so you can use it on your existing assets without modifying anything. Renewable diesel releases fewer climate change gasses because it burns cleaner.

Furthermore, localize your supply chain. Ships are responsible for 3% of all greenhouse gasses linked to human activities globally. Ordering materials from overseas will increase your construction firm’s carbon footprint, but transporting domestically sourced materials involves fewer emissions. It’s also logically simple because they cover less ground and avoid Customs and Border Protection. As a bonus, you enjoy shorter lead times.

Make it a mission to have a lean mindset. A lean construction philosophy aims to cut waste at every chance, minimizing idle time and redundant processes that drive up greenhouse gas emissions.

Look Ahead

Sustainability isn’t an objective — it’s a purpose. It’s a never-ending pursuit, so always seek new ways to run your construction firm in an environmentally friendly way.

Lack of knowledge about emerging technologies is among the limiting factors in innovating. Curiosity is the antidote to ignorance, so keep up with the hottest trends in eco-building. Transparent wood, superabsorbent hydrogel, luminescent cement, 3D-printed soil structures, biodegradable polyurethane foam and plasma rock are some of the most promising innovations.

Most promising eco-friendly construction solutions take a lot of development before becoming ready for sale — and only a few ultimately gain mainstream acceptance. Although many ingenious ideas don’t pan out, be ahead of the curve. Use them to inspire regenerative and climate-resilient building designs that positively impact the environment for decades.

Take Small Steps Toward Sustainability

These four strategies only scratch the surface of what you do to be a force for good in the sector’s sustainability transformation. Strive to be more eco-friendly as you grow and you’ll establish a solid reputation as a green construction business.

Source Happy Eco News

Apple touts its first carbon-neutral products

Posted on September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 by dishanth

The Apple product launch event is a highlight in the calendar for anyone working in digital technology. At its headquarters in California on Tuesday (12 September), Apple launched its new iPhone 15 series and ninth Apple Watch series, plus its second iteration of Apple Watch Ultra.

Apple has stated that the new Apple Watch lineup consists solely of carbon-neutral products. It has delivered a 75% reduction in the life-cycle emissions of its watches since 2015 due to investments in clean energy procurement, energy efficiency and reducing transport emissions.

Product re-design and supply chain engagement have also driven reductions in emissions. Each of the watches includes at least 30% recycled or renewable material by weight, for example, including a 100% recycled aluminium casing and 100% recycled cobalt in the battery.

It bears noting that Apple’s carbon accounting for the carbon-neutral claim also covers consumer use of products.

In a statement, the firm said: “Electricity for manufacturing and charging devices represents the largest source of Apple’s emissions across all product lines. To address the latter, Apple has committed to invest in large-scale solar and wind projects around the world. For the carbon-neutral Apple Watch models, the company will match 100% of customers’ expected electricity use for charging.”

To address the 25% residual emissions associated with the watches, Apple will invest in carbon credits “primarily from nature-based projects”.

It has stated an intention to ensure that carbon credits are “high-quality” by assessing whether they represent additional, measurable, quantified and permanent carbon removal. Another key requirement is that the credits are not double-counted.

A surprise move?

Science reporter Justine Calma has argued that Apple’s announcement distracts from the company’s overall impact on climate and the environment. She said a far more important measure of the firm’s work on climate will be whether it delivers its 2030 and 2050 goals.

Apple achieved carbon neutrality for its global corporate operations in 2020 and subsequently pledged to deliver a carbon-neutral value chain by 2030.

It is seeking to reduce emissions upstream and downstream by at least 75% on 2015 levels, only relying on offsetting for a maximum of 25% of residual emissions.

Apple has described this ambition as “aggressive”. Meeting this goal will require increased investments in decarbonising national electricity grids; low-carbon transport innovations and transport efficiencies; product re-design and material innovation.

On the latter, Apple is working to switch to 100% recycled cobalt in batteries, plus 100% recycled tin soldering and gold plating in circuit boards, by 2025. It is also ending the use of leather across all product lines with immediate effect, switching to a new ‘FineWoven’ textile made from 68% post-consumer recycled fibres.

Apple continues to use the language of carbon neutrality despite a forthcoming crackdown on this kind of claim in the EU. Lawmakers voted in May to support a new directive that will prevent companies from badging consumer goods as ‘carbon-neutral’ or ‘carbon-negative’ if they use offsetting. Only time will tell how Apple will choose to communicate its climate efforts to customers in the EU once this directive comes into force.

Charging port changes

Another sustainability-related facet of Apple’s latest product launch is the switch from the Apple-exclusive ‘lightning’ charging port to a USB-C port for the iPhone 15.

The change is being made because the EU is mandating that all electronic devices sold within the bloc from 2024 use USB-C charging, in a bid to reduce the e-waste generated by the need for each home to have an array of different chargers.

In the long-term, the result is likely to be waste reduction. But, in the coming months, there are concerns that there will be a spike in the discarding of Apple ‘lightning’ cables. It is estimated that one-quarter of European residents own an iPhone.

Source edie

Sustainability & digital skills: Education can change world

Posted on September 7, 2023 by dishanth

Today’s world is facing a twin challenge: recovering from the pandemic, and struggling to become more sustainable. As we shift from the pandemic, a big realisation across companies and governments alike is the role that education plays in ensuring an analytical and scientific response to the challenges we face.

In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of terms such as digital natives associated with the younger generation. However, the ability to use digital devices and consume digital content does not necessarily translate well to enhancing employment prospects for all. Today’s digital world, with its massive amounts of information and misinformation, requires an unprecedented level of fluidity from students. They must be able to distinguish fact from opinion, objectivity from bias, and honesty from insincerity in an online setting.

They must understand the risks of technology and the internet, and how to mitigate those risks. At the same time, the digital world requires them to have the soft skills of an adapter, a creator, a problem solver, and a critical thinker. Are students ready?

Why we need to understand digital skills

The worrying answer is that not all students may be ready for a digital future. In a new comprehensive report from the Capgemini Research Institute titled Future-Ready Education, we found that across all students aged 16–18, only 55% say they have the digital skills necessary to be successful in today’s workforce.

More worryingly, there also appears to be a perception gap between teachers and parents when it comes to the abilities of students, and their perception of students. The usage of digital media is often conflated with digital skills, leading teachers and parents to overestimate their students’ abilities and knowledge of digital technologies.

Digital skills as a competency include four categories: digital literacy (understanding how computers, the internet and mobile devices work), digital citizenship (engaging in appropriate and responsible behaviours online), data literacy (understanding how to work with data and how to analyse and interpret it) and media literacy (understanding how to determine which online sources are credible, with the ability to evaluate content online).

The growing importance of soft and green skills

The digital world requires students to have the soft skills of an adapter, creator, problem solver and critical thinker. Creative thinking and analytical thinking are the most important skills for workers in 2023 and are the top two fastest-growing skills per the latest Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum. Our research found that a large share of students lack key soft skills for employment.

At the same time, green skills have gained prominence in recent years. Green skills enable students to live sustainably and manage their carbon footprint in a more effective manner. These skills can empower students to become changemakers in their own communities. One of the significant benefits of green skills is that they unlock new opportunities in emerging fields related to sustainability, providing a competitive edge in the job market. While nearly 80% of students globally say in our survey they are knowledgeable about recycling and waste reduction, only about half say they are knowledgeable about environmental policy (54%) and climate change (58%).

The rise of Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a key skill for future jobs and has the potential to disrupt education. Nearly 60% of secondary school teachers globally believe interacting with AI systems will be a skill required for jobs in the future. A majority of teachers have experimented with ChatGPT already and while they are worried about its impact on learning, many can also see its potential.

Globally, 52% of secondary school teachers in our survey believe AI tools like ChatGPT will change the teaching profession for the better. However, this would require adapting curriculums and assessments to account for student use of AI-generated content, which over half (56%) of secondary school teachers globally agree with.

Education as a driver of progress

In today’s interconnected world the future success of students depends on their digital literacy. Teaching digital skills to young children and teenagers in secondary education is crucial, particularly in a world that is rapidly shaped and transformed by AI. It allows them to engage with technology safely and responsibly, and equips them with the tools they need to succeed in a changing world.

Despite growing up surrounded by technology, not all of today’s students have the digital skills required to use technology effectively and confidently for their education, or for their future role in the workforce. The digital divide is not just about access to the internet and devices, but about the proficiency gap between students who have the digital skills to succeed and those who do not.

Addressing these gaps can help support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal #4 (providing equitable access to quality education) and Goal #8 (enabling decent work and economic growth). Digital skills enable digitisation, internet penetration, and accessible technology and are therefore the key to improving the existing structural flaws. While strengthening education systems will help mobilise new streams of progress and boost productivity and quality of work, innovation in education is the key to making sure our future workforce is positively transformed by AI and technology.

Source Sustainability

Why Are Eco-Conscious Corporations Interested in Remote Work?

Posted on June 14, 2023June 14, 2023 by dishanth

Why Are Eco-Conscious Corporations Interested in Remote Work?

Remote work has risen in popularity over the last few years and is maintaining its status for evolving reasons. Primarily, people are noting how it’s better for the environment. Eco-conscious corporations are jumping into remote work life to better align with their values.

Here are a few reasons why they’re interested in digitizing their workforces. Companies should consider several pros and cons when making the leap to remote work.

What Are Eco-Conscious Corporations?

Traditional corporations have various values and goals. They may prioritize making profits or expanding their consumer base to bolster success. Eco-conscious corporations also value those things, but these goals must operate within structures that minimize the company’s planetary impact.

Corporations stand to gain from becoming eco-friendly in many ways, and consumer base increases may be most influential in the decision to go remote. Research shows that 89% of consumers have made minor to complete sustainable lifestyle changes. They want brands that won’t compromise those values, opening a market sector businesses stand to gain from joining.

Is Remote Work Eco-Friendly? 8 Pros and Cons

Corporations that want to attract and retain sustainably minded consumers may become interested in remote work due to these benefits. However, they may also face a few challenges when making the green jump. Here are the most vital points to keep in mind.

Pro: It Eliminates Commuting Emissions

When people think about working a remote position, not dealing with a commute is likely the first thing that comes to mind. Logging on from home gives them hours of their free time back. It also means they don’t have to burn gasoline to drive every day.

Breathe London found that morning and evening emissions fell by 25% and 34%, respectively, when people began working from home. Eco-conscious corporations that let 50 people work from home full time eliminate 50 carbon emissions footprints weekly. The sum can significantly affect the planet, especially if the company has a sizable employee roster.

Con: Home Offices Require Individual Electricity

People need electricity to work from home. They must access Wi-Fi, turn on lights, and use their air conditioning or heating. All those things happen in one location when people work in a commercial office space.

Remote teams transitioning to online work see electricity usage multiply by however many living spaces become full-time home offices. Some workers may prefer to think of this as sustainable consumption because it limits a person’s environmental impact to only essential needs, minimizing their planetary effects. However, power becomes an issue when a company has many employees.

Pro: Digital Work Doesn’t Need Paper

Employees print things every day when they’re in a traditional office. They might need documents before a conference call, copies of a presentation or records in filing cabinets according to company filing policies.

Remote work doesn’t need paper. Everything happens through computers, so waste disappears overnight. Employees can keep their work lives entirely on their computers or use their preferred resources, like physical planners made with recycled paper.

Con: Remote Work Encourages More Water Usage

Offices always have numerous waterlines. They’re necessary for kitchen and bathroom sinks, plus lines to other appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers and coffee machines.

Virtual teams use water when working from home, too, but they might increase their water usage in additional ways. Remote workers can do dishes and laundry throughout the day instead of limiting those chores to a few times a week after work hours. It may mean using more water than before, increasing their dependency on the limited natural resource.

Pro: Workers Create Less Product Waste

Going to an office every day creates opportunities for single-use product waste. Employees may stop at a drive-thru for a single-use cup of coffee. The workplace kitchen might have free cutlery with individual plastic wrappers.

Those things aren’t a necessity for remote workers. They can make their coffee at home with reusable mugs and compostable filters. They’ll use their silverware to eat lunch and reusable containers for snacks.

The option to order food for delivery remains when people work at home. However, having immediate access to anything they could need in their kitchens makes remote workers less likely to purchase single-use products that go immediately into the garbage.

Con: Office Furniture Goes to Landfills

When a small business hires only remote workers when it launches, there’s nothing to lose. It’s different when an eco-conscious corporation becomes interested in remote work.

The company likely already has in-person office space in one or more locations. Transitioning to an entirely online workspace leaves those buildings empty. Trash-hauling teams may need to pick up unused furniture and electronics when the business moves out. It may go directly into landfills if the corporation’s leadership doesn’t have time to sell each piece individually.

Pro: Employees Can Make Their Food

Employees don’t always eat the food they bring to the office. They might forget there’s a company-sponsored lunch or free snacks for an upcoming holiday. By the time they get home, the food in their lunch box might not be edible anymore.

Free meals provided by corporations can also be too big for employees who dislike large lunches. Both scenarios result in wasting the natural resources required to prepare food. They contribute to the estimated 30%-40% of waste in the American food supply system, but they don’t have to be an unfortunate part of every worker’s life.

Remote employees can make exactly how much food they want and any kind they prefer while at home. They might even have groceries delivered to reduce impulse buys and eliminate another trip to town that burns gas. It’s another way remote work is eco-friendly and quickly becoming more popular with sustainably minded people.

Con: Home Office Upgrades Create Waste

People may upgrade their home office when they must spend 40 hours or more there weekly. The single-use plastics and styrofoam packaging that come with new furniture pollute landfills after the desks or chairs arrive at the purchaser’s home.

Construction waste could become a new issue as well. Someone may add a room to their house or renovate an existing space to create a home office. The excess waste caused by aerosol cans, unused drywall and leftover paint fills landfills, too. None of that is necessary for in-person work where optimized office spaces are already available.

The Future Is Remote and Eco-Friendly

There are numerous reasons why remote work is eco-friendly. It’s worth noting how it helps the planet and may create new environmental challenges. By understanding both, corporations and their team members can work together to make the least environmental impact when transitioning to fully remote schedules.

Source Happy Eco News

Blockchain-verified sustainable aviation fuel scheme launched by Shell, Amex and Accenture

Posted on June 20, 2022 by dishanth

Called Avelia, the scheme is offering around one million gallons of SAF in the first instance, which its co-founders claim makes it the largest of its kind to date. This amount of fuel could cover 15,000 individual business traveller flights from London to New York, the co-founders state.

There are many business flight schemes through which customers can either offset the emissions related to their tickets or purchase SAF, but this is believed to be the first of its scale to utilise blockchain.

Business customers will be able to book flights using the American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) platform and request verification that SAF, equivalent to that which would have been used if their flights had directly been powered with the maximum blend of 50%, has been produced and supplied. Verification will be provided in the form of blockchain-generated tokens, which have a tamper-proof audit trail.

Shell will produce the SAF while Accenture is contributing its IT services and partnering with the Energy Web Foundation to use its existing blockchain platform, powered by Microsoft’s Azure.

Shell currently manufactures SAF using agricultural wastes in Rotterdam, and at a separate facility fed by agricultural wastes and virgin plant feedstocks in Singapore. It is aiming to produce at least two million tonnes of SAFs annually from 2025 and to continue expanding production through to the 2030s, eyeing new production and blending facility locations in markets including the UK to meet these aims.

Shell claims that its SAF can reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80% when compared with traditional jet fuel, if it is used neat. Current international regulations limit the maximum proportion of SAF in blends to 50%, however. Barriers to using neat SAF include the need for the development of suitable engines and the need to scale up SAF production while avoiding unintended negative consequences, such as poor land-use practices for feedstock crops. SAF currently costs between two and eight times as much as conventional jet fuel, depending on national markets and feedstocks, as it is yet to benefit from the same ‘economies of scale’ benefits as kerosene.

“SAF is a key enabler of decarbonisation in the aviation industry, and it is available today- however, it is currently scarce and costs more than conventional jet fuel,” said Shell Aviation’s president Jan Toschka. “Avelia will help trigger demand for SAF at scale, providing confidence to suppliers like us to further increase investment in production, and in turn helping to lower the price point for these fuels.”

Shell, Accenture, and Amex GBT will notably use the Avelia platform for all of their own business flights.

SAF – the state of play

SAF has proven to be a popular approach to decarbonisation for the aviation industry, which is responsible for 3% of annual global emissions and which – pandemic aside – had been growing rapidly in terms of passenger numbers and emissions for a decade.

It is doubtless so popular because using blends of 50% is a ‘drop-in’ solution, requiring no changes to aircraft – as would be necessary for electrification or the use of hydrogen. The UK’s industry body for sustainability in aviation is planning to prioritise SAF use, efficiencies and offsetting to reach net-zero, and this approach has influenced national policymaking on the issue.

This approach is against the recommendation of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). The CCC’s most optimistic forecast for the use of SAF in the UK’s aviation industry is for it to cover 7% of fuel supply in 2030. With this in mind, and with electric and hydrogen technologies for large planes still years from maturity, the CCC has recommended that the Government caps airport expansion and limits the growth in passenger numbers. The Conservative Party has, to date, been staunchly against this approach – as have most large businesses in the sector.

Instead, the Government is planning to deliver a rapid scaling of SAF production. Ministers have asked the industry to collaborate to bring at least three commercial SAF production plants online in the UK by 2025. The Government has partnered with LanzaTech, Velocys and Philipps 66 to help deliver this ambition, through its Jet Zero Council.

To ensure adequate demand for these SAFs, the Government is mulling a SAF mandate. Its proposals involve requirements for jet fuel producers to ensure that at least 10% of their production annually is SAF by 2030, rising to 75% by 2050. The EU is considering a similar mandate.

Source Edie

Sustainable Technology: The Best Examples of Implementation

Posted on October 18, 2020October 21, 2020 by dishanth

“Not a day passes for me without seeing the many ways in which digital technology can advance peace, human rights and sustainable development for all.”

António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations

The era of green tech is on the rise now, going neck and neck with an uptick of innovative digital transformation. The integration of both, however, has rarely been an option ever before. And only in recent years there has been explosive growth in attempting to combine digital technology and sustainability. That said, the main challenge of today’s business underlies in finding the balance between these two approaches.

On a large scale, every business involves digital processes in one form or another in order to meet the specific individual needs of an enterprise. Consequently, an overall digitalization provides a great opportunity for achieving sustainability goals.

What is digital sustainability?

Generally speaking, the concept is defined as a set of ecologically safe and stable factors and principles that refer to the long-term perspective for social and economic development. These initiatives are realized through a wide range of digital technology implementation.

Technically speaking, every digital business wants to make a difference so it is nowadays opting for becoming environmentally sustainable. On the other hand, a tremendous necessity to think about the future of the planet and humanity arises as far as the eye can reach. An already-changing climate, the overconsumption of nonrenewable natural resources, biodiversity losses, extensive deforestation, extreme natural disasters, massive carbon dioxide emission, poor air, and water quality are the real challenges that are impossible to face alone. Here is how sustainability can benefit a business.

How digital trends impact sustainable technology growth

For sure, all the popular tech trends like AI, ML, Internet of Things, Big Data, edge computing, robotic process automation, and others come to ease our lives. That is why average users as well as large-scale enterprises pursue these innovations and changes. For instance, artificial intelligence has been the key to complex data analysis and management aimed at sustainable decision making in such areas as climate change, air, and water security, biodiversity conservation, disaster resilience, etc.

The potential digital technology investments are estimated in billions of dollars annually, for example, experts from IDC predict that worldwide expenditure on AI systems alone is predicted to reach up to $79,2 billion by 2022.

Obviously, becoming sustainable today stands shoulder to shoulder with typical business aspects, like increasing revenues, reducing costs and providing positive customer experience.

Sustainable Technology: 10 steps going ahead of time

All countries are concerned about sustainable global actions and generate consistent strategies to fulfill the commitments of the Paris Agreement. The required steps should incorporate:

efficient natural resource consumption
mobilizing financial sources
the shift from fossil fuel toward perpetual energy
climate change risk mitigation
supply chain improvement
across-industry transformation, including IT
keeping the balance between the urban and rural economy
taking nature-oriented solutions
vulnerable groups and areas protection
minimizing emission and pollution levels

Presumably, the stakeholders of top worldwide companies feel their responsibility to provide and thus leverage from sustainable digital technology so ahead-of-time enterprises have already taken steps towards becoming clean and green.

5 great examples of sustainable technology implementation

Let’s have a closer look at some sustainable transformation examples and companies that successfully reap from clean technology.

Walmart, one of the biggest retail corporations represents multiple deployments of digital transformations that work to eliminate wastage and energy usage and to provide supply chain control. First of all, numerous built-in IoT sensors and shelf-scanning robots prove to be sustainable in terms of energy savings and customer experience. Also, Walmart is a successful e-retailer that provides efficient online services, like Mobile Express Returns and QR code scanning. It enables their customers to shop staying at home thus diminishes transport usage and CO2 emissions.Walmart is constantly developing innovative ideas that can be implemented not only within the retail branch. In 2018 the corporation patented the idea of a robobee – a self-manned drone for pollinating crops equipped with cameras and sensors. This tool also makes it possible to detect agricultural problems and get more sufficient control over the Walmart food supply chain that, consequently, minimizes food waste.

Patagonia is a sustainable clothing company with $800 million revenue that can boast with using organic materials, selling worn and recrafted outfits and organic provision. Also, the company provides worldwide fundraising through online banking and keeps an online blog The Cleanest Line where articles are dedicated to environmental crises and solutions. Being sustainably conscious, Patagonia has implemented a number of innovations in company management, such asrecycled construction materials with laminated coated windows that prevent overheating
solar panels with photosensors and motion detectors

LED lighting, new systems of heating, ventilation and air conditioning controlled by a smart grid

Moreover, the company has got an AI central workstation that automatically controls all operational systems from an indoor environment to outdoor irrigation. Bathrooms and toilets are equipped with water control sensors. Even the landscape and plants around the buildings are chosen and designed to diminish water usage. Workers are encouraged to use electric cars and get financial compensation for coming to work by bike or public transport.

Mega City of NEOM definitely deserves the name of a sustainability dream where all possible and impossible technologies merge to serve humanity. NEOM represents how far one can go with incredible imagination and substantial finance. The mindset of building a sustainable megacity was born in Saudi Arabia which is ready to invest $500 billion into digital innovations run with the help of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.NEOM is positioned as a future home city and workplace for more than a million inhabitants from all over the world. The implementation of ambiguous digital transformations, like IoT and AL software, is to control environmental conditions within the megacity. For example, saving water, especially in limited desert surroundings, becomes accessible due to smart sensors for water management and rainwater collection. Moreover, in NEOM the average temperature is expected to be lower and the wind speed adapted if necessary. The project’s first results are expected in several years looming at the 2030 horizon.

Microsoft as one of the leading software providers moves towards reducing its environmental impact and at the same time helps other companies turn “green”. Noteworthy, Microsoft’s cloud computing has already empowered energy efficiency and material waste reduction. The increased accessibility of serverless and open-source software minimizes cooling processes, ventilation, and air conditioning in fewer data centers. Adding power management function to Microsoft products enabled smart energy consumption on end devices, like monitors and hard drives.Explore how Microsoft uses artificial intelligence to create a complete directory of US forests. As a result, we can better manage them for a sustainable future.

To achieve global sustainability goals, sustainability technology companies of all sizes should work cooperatively, like Microsoft and Ørsted. The latter is a well-known wind technology and bioenergy provider from Denmark. Their decision to unite enables both sides to successfully meet environmental challenges. Ørsted’s greatest striving is to build “an entirely green world” with a 100 % carbon-free energy supplement by 2025. The company is diminishing oil- and coal-based activity in favor of clean energy systems. Ørsted owns more than a thousand offshore wind turbines equipped with sensors that seamlessly generate valuable data. Microsoft advanced predictive analytics and AI technology is part of Ørsted’s digital strategy of sustainable data transformation for saving time and resources. In 2020, Ørsted was ranked as the most sustainable company in the world.

What’s next

There is hardly an organization that doesn’t realize the necessity of a sustainability approach. The worldwide decision-making entities, such as the World Health Organization or the UN, are deeply concerned about ecological problems and social inequality more than ever before. Immediate measures have to be made for global financial inclusion and political involvement. The price is high but is worth paying when human well-being is at stake.

By Valeriy Ilchenko, CEO of ByteAnt

Source: ByteAnt