For CEOs, sustainability may not rank as highly in near-term priority as Adopting AI, digital transformation and dealing with economic uncertainty.
But environmental impact and sustainability are important long-term goals and are the subject of extensive regulatory scrutiny in many countries.
And the good news is that some relatively simple measures can not only reduce a company’s carbon footprint, but can also cut operating and capital equipment costs at the same time.
For businesses, sustainability and carbon footprint reduction fall under the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework guiding corporate social responsibility practices and reporting.
Fines for non-compliance with such regulations in the EU can be as severe as 5% of a company's net worldwide turnover.
Yet many companies sideline sustainability initiatives as they see them as complex or expensive to implement. The need to address this has come at the same time as two major business-related transformations: One, the post-pandemic changes in how and where we work, and Two, the technology and tools we use to communicate with colleagues and customers.
Thankfully, there are some quick wins available to any business, which are simple to adopt and can actually save costs, make significant sustainability improvements and transform user communications experience at the same time.
Tango Networks' business eSIM solution - called Tango Extend - tackles both e-waste and energy usage for any employee by supporting mobile phones as the universal end-points for Unified Communications. That means companies can retire outdated desk phones and expensive company-provided mobile phones. That in turn shrinks the carbon footprint and boosts company ESG scores.
Mark Brunwin, VP Marketing at Tango Networks, said:
"If you provide a business eSIM to an employee using their personal phone, rather than providing them with a company mobile device, there's a huge environmental, carbon and cost saving,"
Environmental and Cost Impact of Office Phones and Company Mobiles
Office phones, once a mainstay of a company's office, are increasingly coming under scrutiny.
Organizations are adapting and embracing the hybrid and remote work model more, and with more employees out of the office this means that many desk phones are left unused, but still consuming carbon. With large organizations, the impact is very significant indeed.
"The carbon used to make a desk phone is about 20 kilograms, and the carbon footprint of a fixed phone per year is about 56 kilograms," Brunwin said. The production, maintenance, and eventual disposal of these devices contribute to environmental degradation throughout the devices’ lifecycle.
To put that into perspective, 300 desk phones emit around 17,000 kilograms of carbon emissions annually. That’s roughly the carbon footprint equivalent of a person taking 43 commercial airline flights across the United States.
Even if you provide company smartphones to executives, hybrid or frontline workers, the capital and ongoing cost and carbon impact is as severe. The costs alone often prohibit widescale deployment and the rare earth metal extraction and the manufacturing process consumes around 55kg of carbon per device.
