Technology is increasingly being used by businesses to deliver sustainability goals.
Innovative companies can leverage cloud infrastructure to protect the environment, for example by reducing deforestation and lowering food waste.
Recent analysis from Accenture shows that companies which sustainable technology to a significant extent achieve 4% higher ESG scores on the Arabesque S-Ray dataset.
Data is key to driving these initiatives forward, but some businesses still find it hard to find concrete ways to use it. Here are five examples of how technology leaders have used data to make their businesses more sustainable.
Complex supply chains
As a huge global manufacturer working across multiple sectors, one of Unilever’s key objectives is to prevent deforestation in the supply chain. Working with Google Cloud and satellite imagery from Google Earth Engine, Unilever is applying AI and Machine Learning to accurately map the areas of the Earth that intersect with its supply chains, and pinpoint those where its activities may contribute to deforestation. This enables it to look for more sustainable sources and isolate those areas and habitats most in need of protection.
Reducing waste
The French supermarket giant, Carrefour, has already reduced the carbon footprint of its IT operations by moving them to Google Cloud. Running costs have been cut by 30%, while energy consumption is down by around 35%. However, Carrefour is also using tools that make the most of Google Cloud’s BigQuery and AI technologies. The results give store directors more insight into their inventory and local markets. This helps them not just predict demand and meet their customer’s needs in real time but regulate their produce orders and drive the store’s food waste down.
Using Virtual Twins to enhance productivity
Life sciences company, Sanofi, has a state-of-the art continuous manufacturing facility where the production process is connected with R&D. Here, live operations data is fed into a virtual twin, enabling continual optimisation through real-time analytics. This initiative has seen an 80% reduction in energy consumption and CO2 emissions, a 91% reduction in the facility’s water footprint, a 94% drop in the use of chemicals and a reduction of 321 tons of waste per year. What’s more, it’s 80 times more productive, making medicines for twice the number of patients in less time.
Driving sustainable logistics
Swedish automotive start-up, Einride, is disrupting the global road freight industry through a data-driven freight mobility platform and fleets of self-driving electric trucks. Its Google Cloud-based platform improves truck utilisation through intelligent route optimisation, enabling customers to operate their logistics networks in the most efficient and sustainable way. Meanwhile, tech onboard the trucks gather data about each journey and streams it back to the platform in the cloud, including real-time vehicle health data that can be used by support engineers.
Eliminating food waste
Founded in Sweden in 2016, Karma is the force behind a ‘food rescue app’ that connects food retailers to customers and helps them sell their surplus food. Available in Sweden, the UK and France, the service has already rescued more than 4 million meals and over 1,200 tons of waste. Now, through a microservices architecture based on Google Cloud, Karma has ambitious plans to harness granular data on what food is going unused and use machine learning and predictive analytics to reduce their surplus, cutting food waste earlier in the chain.