Sustainability technology (Sustainatech) is used to describe technology applied to sustainability activities and actions for the purpose of efficiency. Similar to “Insurtech” and “Fintech”, activities within the sustainability ecosystem are ripe for disruption in the same way that the financial and insurance industries were before technology innovation transformed them.

Why is the Sustainability Services industry ripe for disruption? Academic theory suggests a number of factors open an industry to disruption. Chief amongst these are:

• Dissatisfied and/or untrusting consumers/clients
• Inconvenience for consumers/clients
• Underutilized technology or technology that is not applied
• Inefficiencies that cause high operating costs and expensive services
• Few yet entrenched players

The sustainability service industry ticks the first 4 items, though not the last. In fact, the industry has a multitude of players, some large and others that are small and emerging in niche areas. This complex ecosystem of players makes it confusing and inconvenient for companies as they move along their sustainability journey. While a company may have ambitious ESG goals, the process of collection, analysis, planning, implementation, tracking and automation, and reporting, can be daunting. Professional services providers often specialize in one or a few of these steps to help organizations achieve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and meet your stakeholder requirements. Some specialize in top-down scoring and disclosure, while others focus on bottom-up supply chain transparency and assurance. Many focus on one specific service, e.g. greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions and offsets.

In this one example alone there are a myriad of service providers; some gather the data, others calculate and track, and others certify. Achieving continuity from top to bottom across all ESG factors requires significant internal and external resources, as well as a substantial budget. Technology has not been brought to fully bear on the sustainability industry to simplify this complexity, give clients continuity, and reduce the cost of achieving sustainability goals. ADEC Innovations is leading the charge in providing a full service option.

How can Sustainatech be implemented?

One of the tricker aspects of achieving your sustainabltiy goals is wrangling your company and supplier data into something meaningful that you can track and report on. More automation can be applied to the collecting the data, normalizing and visualizing the data. For example, cities and municipalities who generally measure emissions through a bottom-up inventory. This exercise requires that they inventory all the sources stationary and mobile, collect from each source, and/or model emissions where monitoring systems are not available. Creating networks of sensors and capturing actual emissions could be sent in real time to inform strategies and tactics for limiting emissions.

As Sustainatech is applied throughout the Sustainability services industry, it will transform the consumer experience, gaining trust, creating efficiencies, and advancing sustainable practices around the world.

Find out more about applications of Sustainatech in our white paper, Mastering ‘Big Data’ in Environmental Sustainability.