Cisco invites partners to join six-month sustainability quest
Cisco is inviting its employees, customers and partners to pitch ideas on how it can drive sustainable growth, and has pledged to turn the best proposals into products, solutions or policies.
The networking giant's ‘Green and Blue Innovation Challenge' kicked off last month and will run until October, when the final pitches will be made.
A European initiative run by EMEAR president Wendy Mars, the aim is to source environmental and social sustainability ideas from Cisco's internal workforce.
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Although the initiative will be driven by groups of Cisco employees, partners and customers can also submit ideas, UK partner boss Angela Whitty (pictured) explained.
"We're asking for teams of four to six people to put together ideas, and the best ones will become ongoing projects. We're looking at areas such as the environment, IoT, healthcare and education, transportation and anything which is around critical human need," she told CRN.
"I think it's really important as an organisation that you're not just talking about these things externally, but you're actually living it within your organisation.
"As we come out of the pandemic, as a UK leadership team we're thinking about the environmental impact of everything we do. You don't just automatically go back to everything we did before."
'We want to take our partners on that journey with us'
The initiative is designed to build on recent commitments Cisco has made on sustainability.
Among these are its pledge to source 85 per cent of its global electricity by 2022 and incorporate circular design principles in all its products by 2025.
Cisco also harbours ambitions of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, and has committed to 100 per cent product return.
More powerful and efficient technology is a key part of the equation, Whitty said, pointing to the Cisco Silicon One chip launched last year.
This has enabled Cisco to reduce its 2801 router to the size of a pizza box, she explained.
Some of Cisco's products, including its 8800 series of IP phones and WebEx Room Kit Plus, are now made using 100 per cent post-consumer recycled plastics.
"That helps us reach our goal of 20 per cent reduction in our use of virgin plastics by 2025," Whitty said.
Amid predictions that vendors will start playing a much greater role in shaping more sustainable behaviour among their channel partners, Whitty agreed that Cisco has "a role to play in setting a standard".
"I would be lying if I said there was anything in place today, or any plans, to start differentiating our partners based on sustainability initiatives. But we will look to our partners to come on that journey with us," she said.
"Some are already doing it and have strong messages around it. Others are looking to us for help and support. Whether measures and metrics and differentiation come in the future, I don't know. But we will help and assist our partners in any way we can in doing that."