How to Take a More Proactive Approach to Sustainability
Techies Go Green Sponsorship Ambassador, Dermott Reilly, CEO at IngeniaTouch, takes us through how both as individuals, and as businesses, we can take a proactive approach to becoming more sustainable.
Rapid climate change has changed the commercial compass towards sustainability. As a result, everyone now has a moral obligation to do something. Business leaders too must urgently recalibrate their raison d'être to include and assist the wider community in which they operate.
It’s going to take time to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. In the meantime, the planet will continue to burn, causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, species to go extinct and severe weather events such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes to increase.
How can you become proactive, and not reactive?
Techies Go Green takes a proactive approach to sustainability, identifying practical tools and innovations that help reduce the waste of scarce resources including water, energy and food, whilst focusing on the wellbeing and health of employees and driving biodiversity.
Whilst digitalisation, data analytics and A.I. all offer massive potential environmentally, by reducing transport costs and food wastage, we can introduce a few non-digital innovations that will also help drive the sustainability agenda.
The oil and resources that we don’t use are naturally the most sustainable. Thus, by taking a proactive approach (as opposed to a reactive approach) we can better deliver sustainable strategies. These are some examples of what we can do below:
Office Lighting
The benefits of LEDs are well documented. What is not so well known is that light can also disinfect properties, helping to create safe environments, reducing air pathogens and pollution, and free from toxic cleaning chemicals or regular maintenance schedules.
Using light for illumination and natural disinfection can eradicate flu and illness in the workplace, eradicate sick-building syndrome and the conditions known as “Presenteeism”, (coming to work ill) which costs the UK economy over £15b per year.
Water
Water is intrinsic to every business and small innovations here can offer remarkable savings for building maintenance and human health. By deploying magnetic and field-effect technologies we can make water a better solvent, reducing our use of chemicals by up to 100%.
Heat
Regarding energy, reflective coatings play a vital role to reflect heat away from buildings. Rather than cooling a building after it gets hot, it makes sense to reflect radiant heat away prior to deploying cooling systems, saving energy.
Shelf life
Sustainability is intrinsic to enhanced shelf life, be it food or equipment. Preventative maintenance enables assets and machines to last longer, and to cope better with stress, vibration, temperature, wear & tear.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is essential for human life. One of the most damaging impacts of rapid climate change is the loss of biodiversity on sea and land. Since 1970, populations of wild animals have declined by more than two-thirds, with the extinction of large sea mammals (whales & dolphins) by over 90%. Whilst the oceans are massive and difficult to reach, everyone can do something to help land-based biodiversity. Bugs Bees and Native trees are an Irish-based non-profit who will kindly visit your property and plant a cluster of 10 trees to foster biodiversity.
Are you looking for support?
If you’re looking for support in any of the areas mentioned above, you can reach out to Dermott directly via email on dermott.reilly@ingeniatouch.com.
Alternatively, you can get in touch with the team at Techies Go Green. Become a signatory to get the constant support your business needs, or reach out to us via info@techiesgogreen.com for more information.
About The Author
Dermott Reilly
CEO at IngeniaTouch
Sponsorship Ambassador, Techies Go Green
Having run his own food packaging and distribution business since 1979, Dermott Reilly became increasingly frustrated by wastage and inefficiency in the food supply chain. From 2010 to 2016 Dermott focused on building the world’s most innovative network of 1000+ nanotechnology labs and engineering specialists, a channel of experts which now underpin NanoLandGlobal. He is a co-founder of Climate Arks, a solution to return dead zone regions of the ocean to pre-industrial fish levels.
Joining Techies Go Green.
If you want to learn more about sustainability and what your company can do to become more sustainable, consider joining Techies Go Green. Techies Go Green is a movement dedicated to decarbonising IT and tech-oriented companies through collaborating and sharing knowledge. Membership is open to both companies and individuals within the UK and Ireland. We would love to have you join and to help you in your journey towards sustainability and decarbonisation.
