Environmental Sustainability in 2023 and Beyond – The Strategic Imperative SGAnalytics_Blog_Environmental Sustainability in 2023 and Beyond – The Strategic Imperative

 Environmental sustainability is becoming critical for organizations to stay relevant and competitive in today’s evolving landscape. Much like digital transformation, integrating sustainability mandates organizations to alter every operation in the business. Today, sustainability is advancing as an integral part of developing a corporate framework. Sustainability for organizations can be categorized into three areas - Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG). 

Today, thinking only about environmental sustainability is one of the imperatives. It is equally important to consider technology investments that are driving sustainability in enterprise and customer operations. 

  • Revenue from sustainable products is expected to grow about six times as compared to the rate of other products. 

  • 50% of consumers today are open to paying a higher price for sustainable products that have a social and environmental impact on the supply chain. 

  • By 2025, consumers will prefer products or services that will cause less damage to the environment, human health, and society. 

Read more: Sustainability Outlook: Top Emerging Trends in 2023 and Beyond  

Environmental sustainability is fueling a market revolution that will give companies opportunities to design new products and services. Massive government funding is further empowering companies to integrate environmental sustainability as a strategic imperative, thereby fostering historical business opportunities.  

SGAnalytics_Blog_2023 Trends

A vital business opportunity, sustainability is more than just a matter of survival for businesses. Seeded with immense government investment, environmental sustainability is now ushering into a new green market revolution. The environmental sustainability predictions for 2023 will enable companies to embrace environmental sustainability with integrity and transparency. The upcoming environmental sustainability predictions are set to have the most impactful changes that businesses anticipate. 

2023 Predictions for Environmental Sustainability 

  1. Carbon offsets and credits will be back in vogue. Carbon offsets have experienced their share of criticism for being an excuse for companies to sidestep actual carbon reduction activities. However, these dubious and flawed practices on offset strategies have attracted immense scrutiny in the offset market. While technology vendors and organizations have learned their lessons from previous carbon offsets, the new framework is aimed to lead the way for setting a different model for carbon-offset transparency standards. 

  2. Fortune Global 200 firms to disclose policies to limit travel for sustainability. Pre-pandemic air travel demand did outpace decarbonization efforts. On the contrary, COVID-19 restrictions assisted in reducing business travel by nearly 54%. With operations getting back to normal, business travel is set to make the much-awaited comeback. However, not all firms are returning to business as usual. Many are using this restart to reevaluate their existing travel patterns by tracking travel emissions data. Public companies are now preparing for greater SEC scrutiny, including fines for misstatements and omissions. These restrictions will enable companies to anchor their sustainability goals and inculcate corporate policies to drive environmentally sustainable behavior. 

SGAnalytics_Blog_Sustainability Goals

Read more: The ESG Rating Phenomenon: A Guide to Understand ESG Ratings 

  1. A set standard to claim supremacy in carbon reporting for greater transparency. Combining the best of existing standards to introduce a new carbon accounting standard will emerge as a benchmark for public-private collaborations. This standard will be functional across industries and regions. This will assist in clarifying the murky areas surrounding scope 3 reporting, like remote work emissions data, thereby enabling businesses to usher into a new era of transparency. This new framework will help companies to deliver reliable Scope 1, 2, and 3 insights to investors, shareholders, as well as customers, thereby qualifying the organization for credit and lending. 

Factors Driving Environmental Sustainability within an Organization 

  1. Investor demand - One of the most influential factors shaping the shift toward environmental sustainability is investor pressure. Gartner research highlighted that 85% of investors mandate ESG factors in their investments. The investor community is majorly focusing on sustainability in organizational practices.  

  1. Attracting New Talent - Being a sustainable business is crucial to attracting new talent. A Deloitte survey identified that 49% of Gen-Zs and 44% of millennials make career choices based on their personal ethics. If a company is environmentally responsible, only then will it experience a rise in new talent. Businesses not focusing on sustainability can lead to losing out to their competitors.  

SGAnalytics_Blog_Sustainability

  1. Enhanced Productivity - Being sustainable leads to employees being more motivated to perform better. Environmental sustainability is assisting in reducing costs, thus affecting operating profits by up to 60%, according to a McKinsey & Company report. Being sustainable also helps in increasing productivity, thus fostering an inclusive culture.  

  1. Consumer demand - An increasing number of consumers - millennials and Gen-Z - are voicing their concerns and demanding sustainable products. 73% of Gen-Z consumers are willing to spend more on businesses that provide sustainable products. 60% of consumers in the UK reduced the usage of single-use plastic to adapt to a more sustainable way of living. With the demand for sustainability set to increase globally, embedding environmental sustainability in the corporate framework is essential for businesses to stay relevant in the coming years. 

Read full blog here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trusting in Trust Architectures – Raising Privacy Questions and the Way Forward

Image
  A trust architecture includes technologies and methods that aim to protect enterprise data, while speeding up digital transformation initiatives and complying with all data privacy-related laws. The increasing prevalence of connected or the internet of things (IoT) devices and companies’ migration to the cloud is pushing organizations to re-assess and validate the credibility of their devices, as data expands rapidly across applications, application programming interfaces (APIs), and networks. In addition, the growth of applied AI, 5G, and the metaverse is expected to further accelerate this trend. Cyberattacks and data thefts have been on the rise in recent years and are posing new challenges by taking advantage of technologies, such as quantum computing for breaking encryptions. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022, the global average total cost of a data incident is USD43.5mn, up 2.6% from USD4.24mn in 2021. The research also revealed that 83% of the organizati...
Read more

Leading Data Science Trends to Watch in 2023

Image
Data has a significant impact on how firms operate globally. Businesses are now able to recognise the most recent industry trends and produce insights that improve performance thanks to data science. This is assisting them in laying a foundation that will help them achieve the desired growth. In order to find customer insights, businesses must use agile innovation in their disruptive business models. Data gathering and analysis play a crucial role in determining the future of enterprises, sectors, and even entire market segments in this era of rapid digital landscape evolution. Data science is a crucial element that will drive them in the future if they are to continue being prosperous and relevant. Industries may expand and endure in this cutthroat environment by integrating data science and its linked components. Businesses concur that analytics, data science, and machine learning have the ability to alter several facets of marketing and sales as a result. The impending data science ...
Read more

The Science of Music: How Big Data Is Transforming the Music Industry?

Image
The music industry is becoming very competitive. There is an ever-mounting pressure to produce the next big hit. While producing quality music is a priority, there is no point in creating music that people won’t like or listen to. Hence, the industry is turning to something more concrete that will help it understand the general listener's changing taste in music and reap greater profits. This is where data science comes in.  With advanced big data analytics tools to monitor music patterns and preferences, the music industry is enabled to predict the next big music trend or hit. This is the reason so many music companies are turning to  data science  to aid them in determining which songs will cater to a larger audience.  Data science and music are emerging as a combination that might baffle a lot of people.   But the question that arises is-  How can music be influenced by data?   The answer is more complicated than usual.  Today, produc...
Read more