We sat down on the third day of New York Climate Week alongside Ulrika Modéer (Assistant Secretary General & Director of Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy at the UNDP) to share our long-term vision of sustainability at Logitech and across the technological industry.
Representing us was Prakash Arunkundrum, Head of Global Operations and Sustainability, who is spearheading sustainability initiatives and goals now and into the future.
As guests on the UNDP’s dedicated hour during these climate sessions, we wanted to illustrate not just what our technological solutions are, but how we’re both operating with sustainability in mind and setting absolute carbon reduction goals for our company.
The technology impact
Unlike products that don’t use energy when used, where the majority or even 100% of the emissions they generate are emitted during their making, technology products face a unique challenge in that they generate emissions simply by being plugged in.
“One of the biggest things in technology is that you use a lot of energy when you use them during your daily use. The best way to impact this is to have a grid that itself is clean… 27% of our emissions globally are from the consumer use-phase, which is when you’re plugged in and using your mice, keyboard or other devices. While we are making our sensors more efficient… but really driving [sustainability] is about making the grid clean.”
Prakash shared that this is both a private sector and public problem, as companies like ours can only do so much internally to mitigate our emissions. It’s up to governments to “pave the way”, creating policies that will help us achieve greener businesses overall.
As Prakash pointed out, the latest Inflation Reduction Act put in place by President Joe Biden has and will continue to have a strong positive impact on clean energy, particularly with the U.S. being our biggest market.
Prakash Arunkundrum and Ulrika Modéer
The Carbon Clarity Initiative
One of the foremost talking points we wanted to share was our Carbon Clarity Initiative - Logitech’s voluntary pledge to provide product life-cycle carbon impact labels on packaging.
“We think Carbon is the new calorie. We wanted to inform consumers how much our devices are polluting. We are holding ourselves accountable to make sure that is addressed across future generations of products.”
One of our initiatives at Logitech is to not only be Net Zero, but to be Climate Positive by 2030 - taking out more carbon than we create, and to do that across our entire supply chain.
This “carbon calorie” approach is unique in our industry, but we’re working with peers and competitors to help them do the same and ensure we’re all able to “compute” the lifestyle carbon value.
It’s important to us that our consumers remain aware of the carbon impact of the products they buy, as they deserve to make informed decisions about every type of product they buy.
Prakash pointed out that this initiative will hopefully catch on across all sectors, as we are now in a generation where planetary health and individual health should be treated as one and the same.
Prakash Arunkundrum, Ulrika Modéer, Chris Kemper and Sweta Chakraborty on stage at Climate Week NYC
Accelerating Climate Action
In line with supporting clean energy bills, collaborating with others in the industry, as well as rethinking our own infrastructure, the ultimate key to expediting positive climate solutions ensures all our energy is clean.
“If you look at all the subsidies going into oil and gas, and diverted only a part of that to clean energy globally, you can see the emissions rate dropping down dramatically.”
But as Prakash pointed out, this needs to be done across all nations and sectors and in line with making dramatic changes, regeneration needs to be a part of the conversation going forward as well.
Having shared the stage with both Ulrika Modéer and Chris Kemper (CEO and founder of Palmetto), we echoed their sentiments that a re-engineering of all our approaches to product creation, energy emissions, and accountability, would be decisive in facilitating worldwide net-zero economies.
Watch the segment:
https://youtu.be/bo5jL_K5BQs?t=27555
•
82 w
Interesting and enlightening conversations there 👏
•
•
82 w
These sessions were enlightening... I would advise anyone who never saw the broadcast to watch it ..
•
82 w
Loved this segment!
•
•
•
82 w
Very interesting session!
•
•
82 w
One of the great moments of The Road to COP27