Mobile and ICT industry has potential to become a net carbon negative

• There is growing pressure and expectation from the public that businesses and organisations of all sizes take accountability for their environmental impact.
• Innovations in recycling and reuse often come about by identifying wasteful or energy-intensive parts of a product’s lifecycle.
• One of the most challenging aspects is behavioural change.
• Combating climate change requires belief, motivation and knowledge, and communicating your positive efforts and successes helps to inspire other businesses to take action of their own.

Wildfires at one extreme and devastating flooding at the other. The line between climate concern and climate crisis blurs with each passing headline. 

There is growing pressure and expectation from the public that businesses and organisations of all sizes take accountability for their environmental impact. 

Those businesses that step up earlier will find it easier to change, will be more positively viewed by their employees, consumers, and shareholders, and perhaps could find a competitive advantage by launching more eco-friendly products and services. 

Emissions in the mobile sector 

Much criticism is aimed at the aviation industry – it is responsible for about two per cent of all global emissions. But that is also the figure for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

And as cloud-based services and storage increases, emissions caused by data centres will also increase.

However, the mobile ecosystem can prevent itself from becoming the new villain of the piece by exploiting its unique ability to aid other industries in reducing their emissions through the development of new technologies that result in companies and consumers saving energy, perhaps leading to a reduction in emissions of around 12.1 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) by 2030. 

So, the mobile and ICT industry has the potential to become a net negative sector. 

What about your business?

Measure the impact of your business

The first step is to measure the carbon footprint of your business. Only when you understand your organisation’s emissions and climate risks will you know where to dedicate your resources?

To understand your carbon emissions, you can use an online calculator for a rough idea. 

Measure the impact of your products

The next step is to complete lifecycle assessments of your different products and services. Identify any carbon-heavy or wasteful aspects, looking at raw materials and energy use in both the production and disposal of old devices.

Innovations in recycling and reuse often come about by identifying wasteful or energy-intensive parts of a product’s lifecycle. A welcome benefit of reducing environmental impact is businesses saving money – for example rather than disposing of its old infrastructure, a data centre may be able to recycle and/or reuse in other areas of its business.

Additionally, telecom consumers should be made more aware of the implications of data waste. Regular file cleanups can reduce emissions and improve efficiency because everything that is stored in the cloud uses energy. It all adds up.

Offset your unavoidable emissions

With a climate plan defined and annual reduction targets identified, you then need to consider offsetting unavoidable emissions.

 It is not reasonable to expect a company to achieve a sudden cut of all emissions. Time is required and there will be some emissions that will always remain. Those emissions can be offset, which means paying for the removal of carbon elsewhere. 

Carbon removal projects are important because even if we were to reduce our emissions to zero, there would still be legacy atmospheric carbon to remove. In other words, stopping making a mess doesn’t absolve us of cleaning up the mess we have already made.

Key challenges and solutions

It might be easy to create a roughly-defined process but it is harder to do it in practice. Rather than gloss over these challenges, it is important to confront them head-on.

One of the most challenging aspects is behavioural change. We all have habits and those habits are hard to break. Breaking them, even knowingly and with considerable effort, can sometimes be uncomfortable. 

But they can often prove to be cost-effective. One business that operated on different floors of a building significantly reduced its energy use (which also saved money) by putting a sign in the building’s lift. 

The sign detailed the energy cost of riding to each floor and asked employees and visitors to consider whether it was necessary to use the lift instead of using the stairs. A five-minute job (printing and affixing the sign) cost very little but had a huge impact on the use of the lift.

Sticking with your plan

Holding your plotted course can sometimes be challenging. It’s easy to feel disheartened by the scale of the challenge. After all, you run an SME – how much will cutting your emissions help? There are, however, vastly more SMEs than big businesses, so don’t underestimate your impact.

To help with this, share good news stories about how environmental projects and sustainability initiatives are working. For example: 

Last year, the EU produced 22 per cent of its electricity from wind and solar power – more than produced from gas; 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a system that can convert greenhouse gasses and plastic into two sustainable fuels using solar power.

Deforestation in the Amazon has fallen by 61 per cent in January compared to the previous year; Last year, newly installed heat pumps across Europe avoided 8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Communicating your climate action also has benefits. 

Not talking about your efforts is the PR equivalent of leaving money on the table. But beyond this, combating climate change requires belief, motivation, and knowledge, and communicating your positive efforts and successes helps to inspire other businesses to take action of their own.

• Gerrit Jan Konijnenberg is a Special MEF Board Advisor and Initiator of sustainability activities at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF). MEF is a global trade body established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across the world.