Unlocking the power of sustainability

“The biggest misconception that people have is that sustainability is about carbon emissions,” says Pablo Orvananos, global sustainability consulting lead at Hitachi Digital Services. “That’s what we call carbon tunnel vision. Sustainability is much more than carbon. It’s a plethora of environmental issues and social issues, and companies need to focus on all of it.”

Companies looking to act will find a great deal of complexity surrounding corporate sustainability efforts. Companies are responsible not only for their own emissions and fossil fuels usage (Scope 1), but also the sustainability efforts of their energy suppliers (Scope 2) and their supply chain partners (Scope 3). New regulations require organizations to look beyond just emissions. Companies must ask questions about a broad range of environmental and societal issues: Are supply chain partners sourcing raw materials in an environmentally conscious manner? Are they treating workers fairly?

Sustainability can’t be siloed into one specific task, such as decarbonizing the data center. The only way to achieve sustainability is with a comprehensive, holistic approach, says Daniel Versace, an ESG research analyst at IDC. “A siloed approach to ESG is an approach that’s bound to fail,” he adds.

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.