Within Enento Group we are driving our proactive work with sustainability in four different working streams. One of them is focusing on our environmental impact. This stream is led by my dear colleague Vicky Allard who outside this responsible work as a Product Marketing Manager within our Nordic Marketing and Communication team. Are you curious about how we are working on this topic and what kind of actions we are doing? I have now done a short interview with her which I would like to share with you. Please enjoy!
When did the sustainability journey start for Enento and how is the environmental impact connected to UN global goals?
– Enento has since the very beginning in 1905 built its business around sustainability by contributing to a sustainable economy, but we decided to broaden our proactive sustainability focus in 2019. We did a materiality assessment based on the needs of our shareholders and determined materiality themes by identifying key environmental, social, and governance development challenges that concern our operations.
In 2020 we stepped up our work connected to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals and decided to focus on four of them where we felt we can do the most to create the biggest impact; Gender equality, Decent work and economic growth, Responsible consumption and production, and last but not least Life on Land. Especially the last two goals are topics close to my heart that are connected to the environmental impact of Enento as a Group, as well as what every employee and I personally can do to lower my carbon footprint.
Describe how you are working when collecting the data for our environmental impact?
– To lower our carbon footprint, we first had to measure Enento’s total emissions during 2019 in the following nine categories; business travel, commuting, IT Equipment, hosting and data services, leased vehicles, Asiakastieto, and UC offices, Proff offices, and events. We then used 2019 as a base year for calculating and comparing our emissions for the coming years and used that data from 2019 as a starting point to work out what we need to change in the future to make sure we are on a steady path to lowering our greenhouse gas emissions and reaching our environmental targets.
What was the result if we compare 2019 and the result from 2020? Was it anything that surprised you?
– The biggest difference was all the implications that the Covid-19 pandemic had on our operations during 2020. However, having all of our employees working from home also turned out to have positive effects on the climate. The commuting to and from our eight offices in the Nordics and a major part of all of our business travel ceased, which made us lower our emissions by more than 82%. The biggest learning from 2020 is definitely that we have been capable of running our operations and continue to increase our revenue despite having all 425 employees working from their home offices – and doing the environment a big favor at the same time! It also convinced me that if we continue to work hard on decreasing our carbon footprint, we will undoubtedly make our environmental goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2023.
What is the business travel situation at the moment within the company and do you think this will change when we now leave Covid 19 restrictions?
– Welcoming our employees back to the offices will, of course, increase the commuting, but since we have decided that the “new normal” in business travel and especially flying is based on the level of traveling we did during the pandemic, I think we have great chances at keeping down all the emissions from business traveling now and in the future.
What actions do we take this year to reach our targets within environmental impact?
– Apart from the obvious of heavily decreasing the number of flights, which by far has been the biggest source of Enento’s greenhouse gas emissions, we have also created a new Environmental Policy, and updated our Travel policy. It might not sound much, but implementing a Train first policy and setting a very low amount of permitted flights per year, it’s a huge step in the right direction. By also continuously educating all our employees on how to become more aware of one’s environmental impact, I’m sure we’re on the right trajectory of reaching our targets.
If you are curious and want to know more you can read Enento Groups’ sustainability review
/Victoria
