Warm welcome to this session. And my name is Maria Sante Ma. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Sustain Lab. And what we do is that we automate sustainability data handling uh which is a large chunk about what I will talk about today.But there is a a um there is time saved at the end of the session for A Q and A. So please write your, your questions in the chat and we'll take them after the session. I don't see them during the presentation, but I will, I will pick up on all the questions you may have afterwards. So please just enter those to the chat. So my background is actually II I like to introduce myself as a change maker for sustainability and quality and impact in creating change is what has been driven me my whole career. So I was previously sustainability manager for the largest frozen food company in Europe in their Nordic division. Um And it was my experience there that actually led me to start Sustain Lab, which is, as I said, a sustainability data SAS platform. But what we'll talk about today is sustainability and data, but we'll do it in a specific order. So we're gonna start talking a bit about sustainability but also include business lens. So I really want to make this connected to what does this matter for, for businesses?

Why should we care? We're also gonna look into or go into history lesson. It sounds boring, but I promise you, this is kind of my highlight. At least I think it's super interesting. We're gonna talk a bit about the pain of data and we're gonna end with the how? Because I want you to leave from here with actual concrete advice on how to start working better with sustainability. So I want you to feel that you're left from here with something that you can implement straight away. And as I said, just like all the questions just put them in a chat that we take them at the end, but we're gonna start with sustainability. And I also actually wanna start here. Um Because what when I do this live, I usually ask people to raise their hands. But now since I don't see you and, and we're all in different places, I just want you to reflect on the questions I will ask. So the first question I wanna ask is if you were afraid that you yourself or someone you knew would get COVID during this last pandemic. And I want you to reflect if you yourself have been afraid that uh there are lunatics sitting on the codes to nuclear weapons or have you been a bit worried that there is a bit of financial instability in the world right now, or perhaps you've been afraid for, for, uh, being part of a terrorist attack in any of the countries where you live.

But how many of you get kind of sweaty pulse when you think about us being in the sixth max extinction of plants and animals in the world right now, how many of you teach your Children how they should protect themselves against extreme weather events? How many get kind of insomnia from thinking about that? We might actually not be able to curb climate change. Well, I can tell you it's the latter of the questions you should be afraid of and here's the proof. So this is uh World Economic Forum's Global Impact Report. It's a yearly report that looks at the highest risks in the world um that year and this is from 2021 and you see on the on the ho uh horizontal axis axis, you see the likelihood of an event to occur and on the vertical axis, you see the impact if this event should occur. And kind of these first questions I talked about uh let's let's start with COVID or actually infectious diseases. This is interesting because this risk report was done in 2021 mid pandemic. And we see how this uh risk moved from the 2020 report before the pandemic. So we can see, of course, the risk increased in likelihood and impact because we were in the middle of the pandemic. But still, it's not as likely that we will have a pandemic in the world as it is that we will not be able to manage climate change. That's quite interesting. And all of the rest of the first question I asked about weapons of mass destruction, acid bubble burst or terrorist attacks are less likely to happen.

And all of them except for weapons of mass destruction poses a lower risk than all of the environmental risks that we're currently facing. Which are these? So we should actually be more afraid that we fail to take action on climate change or that we have a natural resource crisis of clean air, clean water and so on or that the biodiversity loss in the world has not been this fast since 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died or we should be more afraid that the human environmental damage is so vast right now and that we will most most likely because this is the most likely risk seeing more extreme weather events.

So these are the risks we should be afraid of. But how come we are in a position where the the largest risk to humanity are actually self made? Well, we need to have a bit of a history lesson already now. But if we look at the socio-economic trends that led us to prosperity uh over the last 202 150 years. And, and especially since the 19 fifties, we see exponential growth in, in a lot of socio-economic trends. So in world population, we see exponential growth in real GDP, we see exponential growth in uh energy use, fertilizer consumption, paper production, you name it. And this has been super important for us as a humanity to thrive to the level we are today. But this has come with a cost and that's the other side of this equation. So at the same time, we see exponential earth system trends and they are not as positive. So we see an exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions in nitrous oxide, in methane emissions in ocean acidification in tropical forests lost uh and in cost of nitrogen to, to name a few. So the cost of of of the socio-economic growth we had ha ha has been taken by nature so far. And now we're kind of done nature is done. They can't buffer this anymore.

And that's why the largest risk we have are actually sustainability risks and the risks are or or the human influence on the planet Earth is so vast that some scientists now claim that we are in Anthropocene uh the geologic era that is after holocene that we have been we have been in as humanity for the last 10,000 years, which has given us an extremely stable climate.

If we look back through the history of the planet Earth. But I said some scientists and a growing, a growing uh part of the scientific community now claim that we moved into Anthropocene instead. And the word Anthropocene comes from the word anthros, which means human. So this is the the era of humans where humans have the most impact on the planet of, of everything that actually exists, that says a lot about our impact right now. And actually, um the time we live in now is so super critical Joan Sram, which is a famous uh Swedish but but a globally renowned uh climate scientist actually says that what happens in the next 10 years and he said this in 2020. So until 2030 will likely determine the state of the planet that we hand over for all future generations. And I think it's worth reflecting on this a bit. So what happens in the next 10 years? That means that this is really the decade of action because it will determine the state of the planet that we hand over for all future generations. So this, this really gives a lot of um uh you know, a backdrop to, to why this decade is so important. And I am by nature, a pessimist, but I have a friend and she's by nature, an optimist and she says says it like this. Well, that means that the future is still unknown and what it will be like is determined by who we choose to be today.

And she also sees it as a privilege to be alive as in this time that is so important for humanity and to be able to act for change. And that's actually all of us are able to act for change. We are all able to be change makers. So um that's the other way of looking at it that now is the time to really create some change and this is the change we want to see. So I assume most of you have seen this uh it's the Sustainable Development Goals that they came in 2015 and they are ratified in 100 and 89 countries. And this is kind of the agenda, we need to have this sustainable space, uh living space for humanity going forward. And as we can see, it's a lot of diverse topics here as we talk about good health and well being clean water, gender equality, responsible consumption and production, climate action, and so on. So this is the, this is the sustainability we're looking for and, and this again of the uh we're gonna come back to this picture um a bit later and, and um I will then explain you why, but this was kind of the introduction to why that sustainability really matters and what sustainability are we looking for when we talk about the sustainability.

But I promise to talk about this very closely interlinked to businesses. So why would a company then work with sustainability. Well, there are quite a few compelling reasons. The first one is that it's proven that working more with sustainability actually leads to more innovation and top line growth in a company. It also increases the brand value of the company. It's easier to attract and retain talent. It leads to increased efficiency and lower operational costs.

We also see increasing demands from investor side and working with sustainability, gives us productivity for increasing legislation. And the last one, then you know, if you're not working with sustainability in your business, you are going to be irrelevant and that it will mean that your company will die.

So avoiding death is also quite a compelling reason. And we're gonna dig into a few of these that are some of my favorites uh going forward. So let's start with this one. Innovation and top line growth. This should be the most compelling reason to include sustainability at the core of any business. And why? Because we know that when you work with sustainability for real and we don't mean small incremental changes like, but we only have green electricity at our offices or the fruit is organic. We mean looking at your business model at its core and actually change it that will lead to more innovation, more growth. And one example, I'm not really keen on using the car industry as a positive example, but I think this is a good one. So bear with me vulnerable cars ha has an ambitious agenda of being net uh uh net zero by 2040. And to reach this goal, they set a carbon price uh to assess sustainability of the new pro projects. And they set the carbon price internally to more than twice as much as the current carbon price in Europe. And why did they do that? Well, first of all, we know that the carbon price will increase. So it's smart to include it in your business case already now.

And secondly, it will drive innovation or as they say it themselves by evaluating future cars on their carbon adjusted profitability. We expect to accelerate actions that would help us to identify and reduce carbon emissions already today. So they are future proofing their company by setting an aggressive target uh and price on carbon that will lead to more innovation. And then you know who thinks that they will sell more diesel cars than in 2040 obviously not. So this will lead to to uh to more innovation and new types of cars and services. The second one I want to highlight is increased brand value. So 81% of consumers feel strongly that companies should help tackle climate change and improve environment. And 65% are willing to pay extra for companies that are sustainable. And one good example here is is uh Patagonia. This is actually a really old um full time ad from the New York Times that they did for Black Friday in 2011. And I mean, nowadays, uh most companies or a lot of companies actually go out and say, oh, we're closed today because of Black Friday. We don't want to drive over consumption and so on. But 11 years ago, this was really, really early uh to have an anti consumerism Black Friday campaign in the US.

So they put this, don't buy this jacket campaign in, in the New York, New York Times and said, make sure you take care of what you have instead, repair reuse and so on. The uh kind of ironic about this is that their sales increased by 30% post this campaign. But that type of sales increase you can only expect if you work with sustainability for real because otherwise the green washing will really, really shine through and that will not help you uh your brand nor your company. Another reason uh that I think is really relevant to, to this women tech uh conference is of course talent, talent recruitment and 76% of millennials and millennials is the largest group by population in the world right now. And they say that they factor in sustainability performance of companies when they choose an employer, 75% are willing to take a pay cut if it meant working for an environmentally responsible company, and 64% would turn down a job if they experience that the company they apply for doesn't have strong sustainability practices and being a small start up, I can really tell that this is uh something we experienced.

Um We would have ha have, we would have had a hard time attracting some of the talents we have in our company unless we work with impact and for a greater purpose and having this purpose that really helps us going forward together makes us go the extra mile. So this is something that I really, really experienced myself. Oh, this one then productivity for increasing legislation, uh probably the most boring slide I have in in the whole deck. Uh and maybe a boring topic to a lot of people but very important because we see increasing legislation when it comes to sustainability across the board. One key driver is of course the European Green Deal that Ursula von der Leyen uh imposed in 2019 when uh during her 1st 100 days in office. And we now see this legislation trickle down both in Europe but also in other parts of the world. And also of course, other type of legislation in different parts of the world. But I just want to highlight one example here of a legislation that really will make a difference. And that's the non financial reporting directive, which means that companies of a certain size need to report sustainability. And the previous legislation said that companies um o of this size that need to report that was about 11,000 companies in Europe. Now this legislation is getting updated.

So now 50,000 companies will need to report uh to buy legislation. So that really shows that there's a shift here that previously legislation has only targeted larger companies. Still legislation go for the larger ones, but the threshold is lowering and lowering the whole time.

Uh Meaning that more and more companies need to be able to control this and to be able to report you need data. So let's dive into that topic. What is then sustainability data? Well, I promise to come back to the uh agenda 2030 picture and here it is sustainability data is different in every business and every industry. Why? Because the impact is different if we see that this is sustainability uh or at least 17 kind of topics of sustainability. The data to be able to track zero hunger will of course differ from the data that we need to track life on land or gender equality. And that also means that the sustainability data will be found in very different places in the organization. So you will find some sustainability data related to gender equality most likely at the hr department. But the data, you need to understand your uh affordable and clean energy or or the data related to that you might find in operations. So the data is very spread across the organization and and um the main impact will differ depending on the industry you're in. But the problem with sustainability data handling today is usually that there's one lonely sustainability manager somewhere in the organization trying to understand all of this data coming from different people, different parts of the uh organization, different departments, different factories and so on.

When I was a sustainability manager, I had 200 people reporting data to me. Uh from 17 markets, 14 factories across Europe that came in thousands of emails and Excel files. If I was lucky, if I was not lucky, it came in a PDF file or in a phone call. And that process of handling sustainability data is just super time consuming. Uh I spent 75% of my time between November and April to kind of understand and and make sure that this data was as correct as possible. But I always found loads of manual mistakes in the data. So it's a very error prone process and I could only collect this data once yearly. So it led to a really infrequent decision material. Um And, and when I had the data which was about some sometime between April and June, then it was already then 16 to 18 months old. And that was the decision material I had for data driven decisions. And of course, this is a major block for change if you compare it to all other type of business critical data like sales data or financial data that you have on a monthly weekly or even daily basis.

And when I left that job, I thought, am I a crafty sustainability manager or is this a systematic problem? But initially, when we started Sustain Lab, we interviewed 90 sustain uh sorry, 80 sustainability managers and 90% confirmed that data handling was one of the top three pain points in their day to day work. So this is painful. Um And at the same time, we know that being in control of this is helping my business, it helps me to attract and retain talent. It makes me proactive for legislation. So this is really, really key to my business and to understand how important sustainability data will become.

Uh because it is increasing in importance day by day, we're gonna go back to uh looking at the history lesson. So uh I promise this is more fun than it sounds. But I want to compare sustainability data and sustainability data reporting to financial data and financial data reporting.

And we started reporting financial data or reporting it, it is a bit of an exaggeration but kind of the birth of of uh what then became financial reporting was in 1492 by an Italian uh Italian monk and mathematician who kind of invented this double bookkeeping or or actually invented but wrote it down.

So uh that's the start of financial reporting as we know it today. But by then, it looks very different. So by then when we started reporting financial data reporting was mostly for internal needs to understand. How much did I sell, how much did I buy? And so on. The data that was used was always historic. Like there was no up to date data, you would look back and say, OK, now I I had 10 cows and I only have five left. This double entry bookkeeping was the starting point then for standardization because it looked very, very differently. There were local rules. So uh what was reported in a country like Sweden was not the same as in Norway, uh or UK or anywhere else. So and very few companies did this, it was actually not very mandatory. If you would communicate anything about your financial data, you would only do it upon request and you would always need to um you know, it wasn't enough to send something out. You would always need to kind of back it up with the discussion because just looking at the numbers wouldn't say much. And a lot of things were kept as trade secrets. So income, for example, was not shared because that was seen as a trade secret. Then, uh we had the the financial crisis in the 19 twenties and like the community understood that we need to have better control of the finances.

So, so changes need to be made here 500 years later, after the first kind of 400 years later, after the first kind of rules came. So starting from the 19 twenties, we did a lot of updates to how should financial reporting be more standardized, comparable. So we understand what's really going on in companies. So a lot of standards and frameworks were developed. We also demanded that the financial reporting should be relevant, which was not the demand before the the reporting should be up to date. Um It should be accurate values and it should be frequently updated. That was also a new thing and there needed to be comparability and, and transparency towards stakeholders so that we could really understand what was going on within businesses. There were also follow ups and audits of this data and sanctions if you did not comply to the standards and frameworks. And uh this is not what sustainability data reporting looks like today, but just because you don't know what you don't know, doesn't mean it's not gonna hurt you because what we can see on, on sustainability data, it's very much like financial data was historically, we do reporting mostly for internal leads.

We use all data. Uh There are lots of local uh uh kind of best practices. Very few companies are legally obliged that are changing now, as I, as I said, with the eu legislation, for example, in, in Europe, you can't really just read a sustainability report and understand what uh the sustainability impact of the company you need to communicate around it and we keep lots of trade secrets like we don't want to say who our suppliers are because that's a trade secret.

But there is no demands that there are standards and frameworks, but they're not uh harmonized and there are no demands that the reporting should be really relevant. It is not up to date, it's not accurate, accurate and it's not frequently updated. The compa comparability between two companies is almost zero and there are really no follow up or audits or sanctions if you don't comply. So, um that doesn't mean that it's gonna look like this forever. But instead we can really see that sustainability reporting is moving in the same direction as financial reporting. But that's a much, much, much, much higher speed than, you know, 500 years. We're gonna see these changes coming in the next uh there, there are changes coming in next year already 2023 and then we see next, next, next, next step. So within five years, the sustainability reporting will look very, very different from what it does today and that's needed.

And then how should we do it then if we know that? Ok, there are loads of demands coming, the current processes are inefficient. I don't really know what's important for my company. How should I work with sustainability for real? Because there are a lot of companies who are crappy at sustainability work today. And the plain reason is that it's hard, it's very complex. It's as we said, it, it goes across the board of the company um and beyond. Um And it's, it's time consuming to understand it all. But here are some things to get you started. So, first of all, we need to understand the starting point of the company. Uh There's something called ma materiality analysis. That's a process where you understand what is most important for our company when it comes to sustainability and what does our stakeholders think? And this, I cannot stress enough how important this is. We had a case in Sweden a couple of months ago where um a coffee company and a gas station company uh did a collaboration because the coffee company had a lot of coffee they couldn't sell because it wasn't full batches. So the transparency or traceability of the coffee would be lost if they mix them. Uh So for legal reasons, they weren't allowed to sell it.

But then they did a collaboration with this gas station company and um and said, if we sell all of this through you, we still have traceability. So that would work great. Uh The gas company started to to sell uh this coffee through the gas stations. And I mean, that's all good. But the problem was that the campaign they did around this. So they did a quite large campaign saying that we're gonna save 100 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide the first year by selling this cof coffee that would have gone to waste. But this was a great deal for the coffee company because their main business model is to sell coffee. The gas station, their main business model is still to sell fossil fuels. So I did a bit of calculations and I realized that the um amount of time they would sell diesel or gasoline to come up to 100 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide emissions is 28 minutes. That really says, you know, as a gas station, you should not focus on selling coffee that would have gone to waste. You should focus on selling less fossil fuels and change your business model. So that's typically what can happen if you have uh haven't done your analysis correct on what you should focus on. The second part that I really encourage all companies to do is to ensure responsibility, accountability and budget.

Quite often, the sustainability department has a very limited budget and you say, well, if you need money, you can get some for marketing. Um but that is really not driving accountability and responsibility. So ensure that accountability um is held and it's not only the sustainability manager or the sustainability department that needs to work with this. We need to ensure accountability across the organization because they will be responsible for, for different parts of implementation.

And then the third one set bold targets because if you set targets that you know, you're gonna reach, you're not gonna drive innovation and that's not gonna drive top line growth. It's not gonna help you to track and retain talent and it's not gonna help you to be proactive for coming legislation. So be sure that you set bold targets, sustainability targets in nature need to be long term. So set them bold long term, but then break it down very carefully. So you know, also what you're gonna do this year next year and the year after having a net zero vision for 2040 or 2050 is not enough because when we get to 2040 or 2050 all the people who set those targets, they will have left their jobs anyways. So ensure that the targets are bold, but the actions here and now are really concrete and then include sustainability in the forest where you take decisions today. So I think this is quite a um common mistake with both sustainability and diversity and inclusion is that you create kind of a working group of people who are engaged. Um And then you drive this as a sidetrack by doing that.

You will never integrate it in the business and you will never get um the benefits of strong, either sustainability or DN I agenda. So make sure that sustainability should be included in the board meetings, in the management meetings, in the team meetings, in the town halls.

Everywhere we discuss the business in general. Sustainability needs to be part of that and should not be put aside to a separate sustainability committee or the like and then follow up smart often and with quality as we saw with financial data which started with historic data not updated so frequently and so on today is very frequently updated.

We need to go that road with sustainability data as well and we're gonna focus a bit on this because this is my favorite. So when it comes to the solution and how should we work with data better? The first thing is scale down. If you are not working with tracking anything today or very little start scaling down and, and measure what matters first. So make sure you get the process and the habit in and it's more important to track often than track much. So ensure that you track the most important metrics. But to track them as often as you do with any other business critical data, most companies do the other way around, they get a huge sustainability KP I library which they track once yearly that will not lead to change. It's better than to start small, but to track it often, you have the data in every team management and board meeting. And then when you have this process rolling, you can add on more data, it's much easier and more efficient to do it that way. And then thirdly use the data, make sure that you act upon it, make sure that you set these ball targets, make sure that you use the data to understand your progress and where you are right now and also make sure that you don't, don't end up the gas as the gas station company.

Um, because they did not for sure, did not look at their data to understand how much is 100 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide. And II I like to say that, you know, data should not be like your New Year's Eve's dress something you bring out once per year and party with and then in the, the during the rest of the year, you just have it hanging in your wardrobe and you may glance a bit upon it uh once, once and again, but sustainability data should be like your favorite pair of jeans.

You should want to use it every week and to be able to do this in a good way, you really, really need to start automate data handling where you can because the processes are so manual. It takes too much time and then we just spend time on finding and managing this data and not really accelerating change. And that's what we want to focus on. And if you need help, we have lots of resources on our website. Um So feel free to have a look and reach out if, if you need more help in this area. And lastly, then before we go into to hopefully uh some questions, um I spoke now for half an hour. So, so I'm letting Friday the future have the last word, but really no intelligent species would destroy their only home and planet. But we're well on the way of doing that and to make sure we not end up there, we need to have better control of sustainability and that includes better control of data. Thank you. All right. Let me now, stop sharing my screen and I see that there are some um questions in the chat, keep them coming. Um All right. So there's a questionnaire from Kar Catarina, about 81% and 65% for consumers are willing to pay more for green.

I'm wondering what's the population here? It sounds like Sweden or scan the countries but struggles to believe these numbers are supported to describe global or even European populations. Very, very good question and good point. Of course, this differs across uh geographies.

Um But these two particular um uh sources are from Nilsen. Um And let me just open this one. Um ah which I see that win already answered. Uh Great. Thanks a lot for the help for your help. Um Yeah, those reports are super uh super interesting and I agree with you that, that um it can be geography uh geographically, really uh different, any other questions that you might have? And I can see that in as, as you're worried of things. Yes. Uh so am I unfortunately, but I really think that um if we work on this smarter, if we work on this together. We can really, really make a change, but it's not about making those small changes. But the um the really, you know, game changing ones, we have a few more minutes. So if there's anyone who has any questions, then uh feel free to post them in the chat, I will also post my um my linkedin, uh my linkedin link and feel free to connect. And if you have any other questions, I'm also happy to answer them. Of course, both on this hoping uh platform or you can reach me on linkedin. Um and we can continue the discussion there, right? Seems like it's not too many questions. I leave it for another minute or so.

Let's see if there's some more questions popping into the chat and otherwise we can uh I'll give you five minutes of your uh life back and please, uh as I said, feel free to connect, uh feel free to send me a message here or on linkedin. Uh Thanks Wayne a lot for, for answering the questions in the chat. And um let's let's leave it at that. Enjoy the rest of the conference. It was great having you listening. Thank you so much. Bye.