Four disties dish on top sustainability initiatives at GTDC Summit 2024
CRN spoke with four of Europe’s major distributors to hear how they’re tackling their carbon emissions
Sustainability was front and centre at this year's GTDC Summit EMEA with an expanded agenda dedicated to the crucial subject.
The 2024 summit had a full day of discussions focused on new and ongoing initiatives and related best practices, how the GTDC is helping distributors play a prominent role in enabling more transparency around sustainability attributes across the value chain, and how to build a sustainable business without resorting to greenwashing.
To hear how those disties in attendance are approaching sustainability, CRN sat down with Westcon-Comstor, Exertis, CMS Distribution and ELKO Group.
Mark McLardie, head of ESG, Westcon-Comstor
"Westcon recently achieved 100 per cent renewable electricity in the UK. Next, we want to get to 100 per cent across Europe.
"We've just finished work on our FY24 year-end carbon footprint. Our year ended in February, and we've been busy collecting the data and crunching the numbers.
"We are just shy of 90 per cent renewable electricity across European operations, which isn't insignificant, because most of our operations are there, about 60 per cent of the company revenue is generated there.
"It's great to get to 90 per cent but we just need to push that final ten per cent over the line.
"Where it becomes a bit more challenging is that what's really remaining in terms of that ten per cent is that we're occupying space in shared buildings, so procurement of that electricity tends to be landlord controlled.
"It's not directly within our control to be able to influence that, but that's a big part of what we're doing, generally, in terms of working with our landlords to try and push them towards procuring renewable electricity to power facilities, but also things like energy efficiency.
"The most sustainable energy is the energy that you haven't consumed. I think that's going to be really important as we start to expand our focus outside of Europe, because Europe tends to be relatively straightforward. There's tariffs available. In most cases, you can pull up a supplier, and you might be paying a premium, but you can make that shift.
"But as we move into other markets, such as the Middle East and Africa and some of the Asian markets in which we operate, those tariffs don't necessarily exist.
"So in order for us to reduce emissions in those markets in the short term, we need to consume less energy. That's going to be where we're directing focus."
Four disties dish on top sustainability initiatives at GTDC Summit 2024
CRN spoke with four of Europe’s major distributors to hear how they’re tackling their carbon emissions
Tim Griffin, CEO, Exertis IT
"If you look at the summit's agenda, you'll get a flavour of some of the key things that are on people's minds.
"I think we all grapple with the sustainability imperative. How do we react as a distribution industry? And similarly, how do we work with the vendors to be able to advance, particularly scope three. Scopes one and two we've all independently made different levels of progress.
"For scope three, you're highly dependent on your partners in the ecosystem. And so working with the upstream vendors is crucial.
"I think that's very difficult to do in isolation as a single distie, single voice. But as a collective, it's a lot easier to have that dialogue with the vendors.
"It's still a very fragmented world in terms of the vendors effectively self reporting in terms of their carbon footprint, and there aren't too many standards that allow us to harmonise data.
"It's very difficult for us then to present back to our customers in a consistent way."
Tackling GHG emissions
"Sustainability is an important part of our agenda both in terms of as a business, but also in terms of being able to support our customers and their customers.
"Internally, I just signed off an investment for lighting in our warehouse, which is a significant reduction in carbon in terms of energy consumption.
"We do the same thing in terms of consolidation with our logistics partners. Those are all scope one and scope two.
"I recently asked one of our vendors about their packaging and the way they ship their products. So we don't end up with 14 boxes when we could be getting one.
"We're pushing upstream into the vendors, asking how they are building products that are more sustainable?
"And then downstream we're working with the customers of our customers to offer them options to recycle their product.
"That's the beginning of a second life. We have a pretty major investment in mobile phone second life with a company we own called MTR.
"That's been a terrific business for us in terms of delivering on consumer expectations in that space. They're cheaper. They've done exceptionally well during the consumer drift in terms of spending of late. So the ways in which you attack the sustainability journey are infinite."
Four disties dish on top sustainability initiatives at GTDC Summit 2024
CRN spoke with four of Europe’s major distributors to hear how they’re tackling their carbon emissions
Frank Salmon, CEO, CMS Distribution
"Sustainability is coming up the agenda, as are ESG subject matters.
"Looking at the main ways we're tackling our own carbon emissions, one of the first things we've had to do is try and capture what we're contributing to the waste.
"Trying to get an understanding of our data, trying to make sure our data reporting is accurate, trying to ensure data from vendors is correct.
"We've also rolled out a solar panel system in our warehouse. In the summer months, I think we're reducing about 80 per cent of our consumption, which is positive.
"We have lots of small initiatives, everything from our coffee machines across all of our offices, to recycle packaging, to awareness, the educational side of it, trying to be good, responsible corporate citizens with the decisions we make."
Four disties dish on top sustainability initiatives at GTDC Summit 2024
CRN spoke with four of Europe’s major distributors to hear how they’re tackling their carbon emissions
Vadims Rabsa, CFO and Martins Ozolins, COO, ELKO Group
MO: "The agenda is changing, especially around sustainability.
"It's good to have this discussion together so we can tackle it as the industry as a whole, as a body like the GTDC doing either some lobbying for legislation, or looking for some common solutions.
"For example, sustainability data, how we can collect the data, how we can aggregate it, how we can pass it on to our customers, that's something that this body is helping to deal with."
VR: "The sustainability piece is an interesting part of the equation.
"For our part of Europe, I wouldn't say that it's high on an agenda, but we think it's coming.
"We're trying now to understand the space and the approach, what these companies are doing, and what's their strategy.
"For us, it may play well due to a number of reasons. The legislation is changing, and that's more still in the western side of Europe, but it's moving east.
"Public procurement is starting to set some limits. They want to see part of the procurement as a circular economy, or refurbished or manufactured, to work on the sustainability piece.
"For the bigger guys, it's easier, since they have a complete portfolio of the vendors available. For us, we have less access to ‘A brands' directly.
"We have them in a number of markets, but then we have other markets where we don't have the access to the ‘A brands'.
"So for us, then it's an opportunity to pursue new revenue streams without negatively affecting our existing new device sales."
MO: "It's not a focus right now, but an opportunity we're analysing.
"So we want to dig into those opportunities and start to understand the space. Who are the players, what are the conditions?
"We see that margin-wise, it has a better opportunity than the new devices with the big numbers. So that's part of the sustainability story.
"The space out there is complex. There is a lot of data, lack of standards, and it's a question of how to navigate space.
"So we're happy the GTDCis taking some initiative in bringing vendors and distributions together and trying to put up some data models and information exchange that will help us on that journey.
"There are no standards. Each vendor is reporting data in the way they are comfortable. And they are also starting to see this data as competitive data, since consumers, especially the younger consumers, are starting to pay more attention to the products."