Logicalis’ UK&I MD has revealed that part of his bonus is now linked to sustainability, as he talked through the Cisco Gold partner’s efforts to embed sustainability into its “DNA”.
Having committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in December, Logicalis published its first environmental statement last month.
It set out 10 sustainability pledges and expressed an aim for Logicalis to become carbon neutral on scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025 and a net zero carbon organisation by 2050.
In addition to targeting “low-hanging fruit”, Logicalis is doing some things “I don’t know if I’ve seen elsewhere” in its pursuit of becoming more sustainable, its UK&I MD Alex Louth said.
“Part of my bonus is linked to us being sustainable, so we’re actually building it into the DNA of how we operate as a business,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“This isn’t a nice to have. This needs to be a way of life.”
Low-hanging fruit
Louth said he “loves” the low-hanging fruit when it comes to sustainability, including the commitment to having 75% of operations powered by renewable energy and 50% of the waste generated by its operations diverted from landfill by 2025.
The Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and NetApp partner is also looking to make speedy inroads on the employee travel portion of its ‘scope 3’ emissions.
To this end, Logicalis earlier this summer partnered with climate group RouteZero. This echoes moves from the likes of Computacenter, which recently created an internal levy on business travel (with any flights or hotels stays charged at £10 – see p4, here).
“Travel is something we all do in this industry, but if we don’t look at how we’re doing it we’re never going to achieve the scope 3 emissions,” Louth said.
“We’re not saying no air travel – that’s impossible in the industry and the world we live in. But it’s trying to find and compare and look at lower-carbon travel rather than the easy default – and that’s the way we’re driving it down.”
Turning the screws
In an effort to tackle its wider scope 3 emissions, Logicalis is committed to ensuring that “80% of its suppliers spend and users of sold products” will have science-based targets in place by 2026.
It will engage with its top 10 suppliers and develop procurement policies that “assist in selecting low-emission alternative suppliers” to aid that goal.
“I think this approach is going to be taken by all eventually,” Louth said.
“But there are always going to be some frontrunners, and I’m delighted to see Logicalis making this commitment and going first. I don’t think we’ll be the only ones. This isn’t a competition; it’s about all of us coming together as a community to make a difference.”
Will Logicalis eventually cold shoulder vendors who don’t move at the same pace on decarbonisation?
“Most of our main partnerships have already kicked this off and are already somewhere down the track; it’s just about working with the others to get them on that train with us,” Louth replied.
“But this is not a niche subject anymore; it’s a mainstream conversation. I’d be very surprised if we’re not holding each other accountable moving forwards.”
‘We’ve got to listen to customers’
Almost half of the CIOs Logicalis questioned in a recent survey said they will look at factors such as carbon outputs, sustainability and energy efficiency when choosing new suppliers, Louth said.
“We’ve got to listen to that. That’s really important data to work on, and not listening to that would put us in a very old-fashioned bucket where you’d have to do a lot of work to catch up,” he said.
Logicalis is in the process of having its net zero targets agreed by SBTi, which would bring it into line with UK publicly listed IT solutions providers Softcat and Computacenter.
Is has also worked with the Carbon Disclosure Project to deepen the scope of its carbon reporting and has engaged rating organisation EcoVadis to gain a better understanding of its wider ESG performance.
Sustainability became a component of Logicalis’ management bonus in its last financial year. Louth’s own targets linked to progress on EcoVadis and his team’s success in rolling out group initiatives locally, he said.
“Did I get it? Yes I got it,” Louth revealed.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
