ImpactNow 2022: Why the world needs more sustainability events – and why we created one 

Why we need more sustainability events

It’s not news to anyone at this stage that we are living in the middle of a climate crisis.

With global heatwaves, floods, and extreme weather conditions reminding us on a daily basis, it does not need to be argued that something needs to be done.

Of course, there are a lot of different things that could and should be done, but one key point is reducing large corporations’ emissions.

And the largest part of these emissions come from the so-called scope 3 emissions, meaning all of the emissions from the supply chain. Often these account for as much as 80% of company emissions.  

Therefore, we at Sievo, a company with a strong background in specifically procurement analytics, feel we have the responsibility to do something.

The story behind ImpactNow 2022

Recently, we launched our newest and fastest growing product, CO2 analytics. Yet we realized when wanting to discuss the topic with various experts that sustainability events focusing on the topic are as hard to find as people who have never heard of Ed Sheeran.     

Naturally, we decided to take matters into our own hands and arrange an event in Helsinki, specifically focused on scope 3 emissions.

The mark of 100 registrants filled quite fast, which made us smile and realize that we weren't the only ones wanting to spend a day focusing on (at least trying to) saving the world.   

Insights from the event

We were joined by amazing speakers from around the world ranging from sustainability leaders as well as experts on various matters such as offsetting emissions or driving supply chain strategies.  

Below are some of the highlights of the event. 

Poppy Brewer, Senior Manager at Accenture focusing on sustainable supply chain strategy, gave an eye-opening talk on how we are moving from the era of carbon promises to action.

Some key insights from Poppy’s speech included the following.

Firstly, the leading companies are increasingly focusing on supplier collaboration, with some examples being tailored engagement models by segment, investigating SBTI data, and collective action plans together with the suppliers.

With the leading companies also adopting internal carbon prices to prioritize certain investments, the future could also involve commercial incentives for suppliers. But what else does the future hold? Listen to Poppy’s speech in the link at the bottom of this post to find out.   

Kati Ihamäki, VP Sustainability at Fiskars Group and Kaisa Mattson, Director of Sustainability and quality at Fazer Group discussed the best practices in procurement and sustainability collaboration.

The speakers highlight that although actions are taken, progress needs to be sped up to reach the targets set. Although there are several different ways to collaborate together (whether it be the finance, procurement, and sustainability organization leading the initatives), the most important thing is that sustainability is not operated in silos but rather integrated with other operations.

Focusing on the right areas of the business, “everyone needs to be their own sustainability director” to get to where we should be.  

Heta Pirttijarvi (that's me 😁), Product Manager of CO2 analytics at Sievo, explained the various solutions out there to help in the challenge of scope 3 emissions.

For those wanting to start their journey on the carbon reduction path, there are a lot of different options ranging from consultancies to in-house excels all the way to the myriad of software providers. Heta shed light on the pros and cons of each solution – and spoiler: some may be better suited for certain types of companies than others.  

Francois Rousselot, Group Head of Procurement at Hikma Pharmaceuticals talked about their journey in using analytics to understand scope 3 emissions.

What was previously a very narrow view of their emissions quickly turned into a broad analysis of their scope 3 emissions all the way from key KPIs to specific materials as the company partnered with Sievo.

One of the key aspects for Hikma has been the ability to now identify emission hotspots and prioritize focus areas for reductions.   

Finally, Ulla Heinonen, managing director at Gaia Consulting, and Niklas Kaskeala, chief impact officer at Compensate, spoke about the road to net zero. There are a lot of promises from companies to be net zero soon, but many are not yet offseting anything.

A strong thesis of the speakers was that it’s time to act now, and not only compensate for emissions 1 year before your target is due in 20 years. Offsetting and reducing emissions should not rule each other out, but rather work together to reach the goals set – but in the right way.  

Watch ImpactNow on-demand

So what next? Will we be having another sustainability event? Stay tuned for more!  

In case you missed the event, feel free to feel all of the energy from our speakers from the on-demand videos. Access them via the form below:  

And help us make an impact. Impact now.