In the light of the current climate crisis, corporations and individuals have the responsibility to take actions to reduce their environmental impact and contribute to the cause of climate action. The motivation to embrace the concept of sustainability can be different for different actors. For individuals it could be to reduce their personal resource consumption levels. For companies, a variety of factors could go into walking the path of sustainability such as:
1. Responsibility as a company to proactively participate in the fight against climate change.
2. Align with UN Sustainable Development Goals to become a Responsible Manufacturer.
3. Attract investors, customers, partners, and new talent.
4. Public Reporting and get recognition for early voluntary action.
For startups, addressing these issues can seem to complicate matters of immediate priority: switching conventional procurement practices to sustainable sourcing throughout the supply chain has the potential for delays, to impact quality or even price. How may a startup navigate through the dilemma of prioritizing such conflicting topics?
There is no patented golden bullet solution available. Part of the reason to embed sustainability into the way of doing business is to make such conflicts visible in the first place. The company will then need to find a way to strategically weigh various topics. This will depend on the corporate culture and how much sustainability thinking has been embedded into the business already.
Our intention is to provide a simplified guideline for how to begin incorporating sustainability in your organization.
This guide does not claim to illustrate all activities needed for developing a sustainable startup ecosystem. Rather, it introduces topics and creates a starting point for startups. Each of the steps mentioned below can be subject to further discussion on its validity and implementation at your respective organization.
There are two main considerations that every startup must undertake when devising their sustainability strategy:
1. Avoid - Reduce - Offset strategy towards net zero: The possibility of offsetting carbon emissions should not translate into the freedom to emit however an organization wants. Avoiding emissions in the first place is the best thing that you can do for the environment, but the problem with an avoidance strategy is that it is expensive. The second best thing is to reduce emissions throughout the value chain. After taking emission avoidance and reduction measures, only the remaining portion of emissions should be offset. Offsetting should be the last resort in any emission reduction strategy.
2. Sustain-ability: A startup must first ensure its own viability to achieve sustainability. While numerous challenges arise during the growth stage, sustainability should not be viewed as an additional burden. Instead, it should be embraced as a guiding principle—a green blueprint for conducting business. Sustainability is a strategic approach rather than a problem to be solved. Therefore, it is crucial to integrate sustainable practices gradually and thoughtfully.
This guide can be followed by any startup and not only those which belong to the quantum sphere. Startups involved with quantum technology either directly or as an enabler must consider how the picture changes as the technology scales up. Product development should be mindful of both the scaling energy demand and material use. Companies need to identify critical materials in their supply chain and study potential environmental risks from these materials as the business grows. This supply chain assessment should be performed from both a scalability and sustainability perspective. Quantum technologies demand the use of certain rare earth elements, whose extraction and mining often poses various environmental risks. Extraction of rare earths is also a question of geopolitics as more than half of the rare earth mines and processing centers are under Chinese autonomy. So, ethical sourcing of these materials also needs to be ensured.
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