MORE THAN CARBON

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS | TEXT: DAVID J. CORD

SAP believes that human rights is a core pillar of sustainability – and companies can profit by defending them. While much attention is paid to environmental sustainability, social sustainability is equally important. Sustainable businesses must prioritise people across the value chain – starting with diversity, equity and human rights in the workforce.

Tiina Antturi is not your typical business executive. She has a history in high-tech companies, but she was also CEO of the Finnish branch of World Vision, a humanitarian NGO. Such a background gives her a unique voice as SAP’s Head of Sustainability for the Nordics & Baltics.

“I got to see the fragility of life in the slums, in the dumps, in the aftermath of extreme climate events,” she says. “I learned that sustainability is not just about reducing carbon emissions. It’s about the planet, people, prosperity and governance. It’s about human rights.”

Antturi likes the portmanteau ECOnomics, meaning ecology and economics. Yes, a company can improve profits by doing good: for example, improving energy efficiency has the double-barrel benefit of lowering emissions and lowering costs.

SAP has a wealth of solutions to help enterprises improve all aspects of sustainability, like lowering greenhouse gas emissions, improving health and safety, reducing waste and designing circular products. They can give companies better tools for their sustainability reporting and provide consumers visibility and transparency of the goods they use. The key to almost all of this is data. Organisations have the data, but they need to correctly analyse it and use it to make good decision, which is SAP’s expertise.

Yet Antturi believes companies need to be more ambitious.

“To make the world a better place we need to have businesses involved,” she says. “It can’t just be consumers, NGOs and governments.”

She gives the campaign against disposable products as an example. Many people in poor areas rely on one-use disposable sachets for their personal hygiene products. These are cheaper and easier to store, but are terrible for the environment when they just end up in landfills.

“We have worked with customers to change their plastic packaging to recyclable or decomposable materials,” Antturi says. “Nine billion plastic tooth paste packages a year can be turned into decomposable ones. This is why corporations have the power to improve peoples’ lives.”

But why should companies care about such issues? Because a company is not a soulless entity, but a collection of people.

“People need to have a purpose, particularly young people,” Antturi says. “They will be leading our companies in the near future. I encourage them to see how the world looks, to visit the slums and the dumps of electronic waste, and to understand how they can use business to affect and influence things, to make the world a better place.” | Visit www.sap.com/finland to learn more.