The technology sector, known for its limitless ingenuity and rapid pace of innovation, has long been a pioneer in embracing sustainable development. Sustainable technology is one of Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023.
As technological advances become increasingly integrated into every area of people’s lives, especially with the billions who use mobile technologies to access an array of services that enhance life, technology companies must now incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into every part of their business to help individuals, society, and the world.
ESG initiatives are gaining momentum as technology companies refine how they measure progress toward achieving their social goals and communicate positive values. The key to adopting ESG is to embody and integrate these principles into every aspect of business, rather than conducting them as isolated sideline projects, with four critical strategies:
- Ensure all operations and compliance promote health and sustainability.
- Protect the environment through a low-carbon business model.
- Improve the lives of millions with human-centered innovation.
- Engage with emerging companies across the ecosystem to advance common goals.
Applying the values
ESG technology companies’ commitment should be evident in all their offerings to encourage their workers, partners, and customers to think, create, and believe in sustainable development and innovation. Providing professional, reliable, and cutting-edge products and services with ESG values can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. And building social responsibility is essential to support the entire ecosystem.
Here are three ways technology leaders should practice their ESG values:
- Build ESG into your business and supply chain.
With the global climate crisis and other challenges in the main public debate, technology organizations must integrate environmental initiatives in every aspect of production and distribution. They should invest in carbon neutrality as much as they do in innovation.
Tech companies can make a significant contribution to sustainability by reducing their carbon footprint at each stage of the product life cycle. Achieving the critical threshold of carbon neutrality requires determination and patience—but small changes add up.
The long-term roadmap for low-carbon development helps OPPO work towards carbon neutrality: decarbonization of manufacturing, reduction of the carbon footprint of products, low-carbon investment, digital carbon management, and collaboration in the development of climate change standards. .
To fulfill its promise to make its operations carbon-neutral by 2050, OPPO in 2022 began measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its global operations as a basis for its carbon-reduction strategy. By the end of the year, energy saving and emission reduction measures had already cut 6,000 tons of GHG per year. OPPO’s first purpose-built data center, the Binhaiwan Bay Low-Carbon Green Data Center, runs on 100% clean energy.
Achieving sustainability goals means applying an inventive mentality throughout the products’ life cycle. Starting this year, to ensure that all packaging materials are composed of 100% biodegradable materials, OPPO has removed almost all plastic materials from the outer packaging of mobile phone devices, including the most -or innovation of the company, the foldable Find N2 Flip phone.
- Change for individuals and communities, not just products.
Tech companies need to get better at developing products that create sustainable value for society and solve its pressing problems. This principle goes hand in hand with OPPO’s corporate mission of “Technology for the People, Excellence for the World.” The company expresses this ongoing and growing commitment to sustainability through thought leadership, products, and continuous innovation.
In 2022, published by OPPO Zero-Power Communication White Paper, which expresses its technological principle and explores the development potential. At the Mobile World Congress in 2023, OPPO was introduced Zero-Power Tag: a compact, low-cost, passive Internet of Experience (IoE) technology that enables communication over a wider range by using radio-frequency energy from the environment instead of batteries, while also reducing power consumption of everyday IoE devices and sensors.
Traditional batteries are a tough challenge to maintain. They are expensive to make, they die quickly, and when they do, they become hazardous waste.
OPPO’s new state-of-the-art Battery Health Engine (BHE) system can protect the health and extend the longevity of smartphone batteries. By adjusting the charging rate of lithium batteries in real time and continuously improving the electrodes, BHE has doubled the industry average for smartphone-battery lifespan, maintaining battery capacity up to 80 % of 1,600 charge cycles, or four years of typical use—does it. the most durable smartphone battery in the world.
- Encourage new tech companies to thrive.
The world is full of new and emerging innovators dedicated to using technology to improve life. Major regional and global technology brands with the reach to make a big difference also have the responsibility to support these emerging organizations in their ESG journeys for exponential impact and to reduce the great technological divide around the world.
To lead the technology sector in social responsibility, OPPO goes beyond incorporating ESG initiatives into its own creation and innovations and supporting new startups through The OPPO Research Institute Innovation Accelerator program it launched in 2022.
Through this new accelerator, OPPO is helping emerging technology companies to assume social responsibility as they create new products, by giving each of up to 10 entrepreneurs $46,000 in financing to help them develop their proposals and find opportunities for research and development support, partnerships, funding, publicity, and commercialization.
Letting values lead
A changing world means that tech companies need to be more leaders and thinkers than ever before. Companies that only make cell phones will eventually be eliminated by competitors that meet the evolving needs of their customers, find new possibilities in IoE scenarios and bring about ESG-driven breakthroughs in the market.
Just as the technology sector drives global innovation, it must also take the lead in social and environmental responsibility. Tech companies have the reach, tools, and mandate to lead the way in creating a better future. A mission-driven approach should inform every organization at every stage: product design, manufacturing, operations, work environment, and end users. All tech businesses are global citizens, and we all need to embed ESG principles in everything we do.
Learn more about OPPO innovation and technology oriented sustainability.
