Lenovo 360 Summit: The evolution of sustainability reporting, its unbreakable link to AI and the relentless quest for better data management

In the second part of this feature, the audience heard from the ‘Godfather of sustainability’ John Elkington, explored the connection between sustainability and AI, and heard about the many economic opportunities arising around sustainability and e-waste

To achieve the sustainability goals we have set, the world needs AI, despite the many environmentally and socially unfriendly side effects of the technology.

That was the overriding viewpoint during the mid-morning and afternoon sessions at the Lenovo 360 Circle summit in Geneva.

During a fireside chat, Elkington, founding partner and executive chairman of Volans, said it was an exciting time for AI, but agreed it brought challenges. He explained how he coined the famous ‘triple bottom line’ term – People, Planet, Profit – in 1994, which led to the Global Reporting Initiative, but said he recalled the term some decades later and rebranded it the three ‘R’s – Resilience, Regeneration and Responsibility.

“When I can up with the triple bottom line it made a lot of sense to think about how much money you can make or save by doing the right thing on effluents, emissions, waste, energy etc,” Elkington said. “But then I got fed up with the number of people talking about doing trade-offs. That was not the intent. It was meant to be a framework which you would integrate [your business] across. That is when it moved to the three ‘Rs’.”

He added “If you’re going to integrate across the triple bottom line in business and financial markets, I think responsibility remains absolutely central, when you see corruption and bribery spreading in different parts of the world in rather unexpected ways. Critical resilience is increasingly central. And regeneration is a really exciting part of the agenda. You are going to have to demonstrate that you’re being regenerative and not just in a biological or ecological sense. This is economic, it is financial. It is social, it is political.”

AI is essential to hitting global sustainability targets despite its environmental cost

Elkington said AI is a vital ingredient to power this move.

“I think AI is causing us huge headaches with energy and water consumption, and all the social issues, but I do not think that we can achieve anything around sustainability without AI,” he said. “The standard issue of human brain is not fit for purpose in dealing with that level of complexity. We are going to be flooded with data and we need to turn it into information and intelligence to create vision.”

Sticking with the AI theme, Marco Obiso, chief of digital networks and environment department at International Telecommunication Union (ITU) shared alarming statistics in his keynote about the amount of raw and precious materials such as gold and silver that are currently recycled (less than one per cent), along with 24 million tonnes of Iron lost to landfill in our relentless pursuit of the latest technology innovations.

“AI is a huge opportunity, but it needs a massive consumption of power. We need a set of rules and we are pushing for global regulations around recycling,” he said.

Speaking on a panel straight after, his colleague Garam Bel, circular economy coordinator at ITU, said the adoption of AI is causing more inequality in certain regions.

“e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream with 62 million metric tonnes created in the last year. AI is causing major tech refreshes, but in large parts of the word there is still a digital divide. The question is how do we make AI sustainable – how do we slow things down?”

AI’s human impact: Workforce disruption and inequality rise up the agenda

Diana Holdorf, executive vice president at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) said in her keynote that the AI push is going to drive a staggering number of new datacentre builds.

“The new need for datacentres is going to double the requirement for energy usage to almost 10000 terawatts by 2030,” she says. “To put that into perspective, it is about the amount of energy used by the country of Japan - so how we account for the capacity of provisioning for that power generation needed in the next four years is going to be critical.”

Holdorf added that the social side of AI should not be dismissed either.

“There is a very human dimension to AI – the workforce displacement and disruption, the inequality driven by access,” she adds. But on a positive note, 87 per cent of businesses questioned by the WBCSD said they see competitive opportunities associated with sustainability arising in the coming decade.

And this all boils back down to data.

Why channel firms must shift from ESG cost to long-term resilience strategy

On the penultimate panel of the day covering the economic benefits of sustainability, the issue of recycling and a need to harness data correctly were covered.

Nicole Sherwin, chief impact office at EcoVadis, said the organisation, which scores thousands of companies globally on their ESG achievements, said a whopping 85 per cent of people questioned don’t have the correct ESG information from their suppliers.

She stressed that companies need to stop focusing on the cost of ESG and start looking at the bigger picture.

“The focus needs to be on long-term resilience where firms can use their data for decision making,” she says. “There are data gaps, specifically around carbon, so there is still a lot of work to be done to be able to drive decisions for a business, both in revenue terms and for society.”

Simin Zhou, VP at ULTRUS, said recycling was imperative and would generate business opportunities.

“As a society we have produced nine billion tonnes of plastics in total, and seven billion of those are not recycled – this is not OK,” she said.

“It is imperative that all our countries do something about it. There is money to be saved and opportunities to be taken advantage of.”

Read covergae from the first day of the event here.