Climate Group’s Post

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Sustainability Shorts 2024 with me, Helen Clarkson. This is our short and sweet interview series that we're doing in the run up to Climate Week NYC 2024, where we discussed the topics that are on everyone's mind. And today we're talking with Sango Band, Claire Pardini, Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Corporate Social Responsibility and Pascal FARC. Director, Sustainable Business Development worldwide leader in light and sustainable construction sandbag designs, manufacturers and distributes materials and services for the construction and industrial markets. Sigvaris President in 76 countries with more than 160,000 employees and is committed to achieving net 0 carbon emissions by 2050. So welcome to you both. It's really great to have you here. Good to be there. How are you doing? Good. So we're going to get straight into it. You've been accelerating. Sustainability in lots of different areas of your work. So can you tell us how you're integrating sustainability into your organisations overarching business strategy? Yeah, well thanks for inviting us and asking this question actually sycophants commitment. Two, sustainability in sustainability is largely guided by its purpose, you know, making the world a better home. And it's also completely obeying, embedded in our in our vision, in our strategy just to become the leader in lightened sustainable construction. And to to do so and to achieve our commitment, we actually I always say we walk on two feet. One is to maximize our impact, meaning that we are proposing and selling to our customers solutions that reduce their own, I would say footprint also to emission that reduce the carbon content of the building that reduce the CO2, you know emission during the the life of the of. The building, so that's how we maximize our, our impact to, to customers and of course, at the same time, we minimize our own footprint. And as such, we are committed to net 0 carbon by 2015. And, and just to you know, make sure everyone understands how construction is key for sustainability and net 0 carbon construction accounts for between 25 and 40% of the CO2 emission. Worldwide, so nothing will happen with without constriction. I would say fighting CO2 emissions because this sector is key. And by the way it also consumes around 50% of the resources in the planet. So Syncopal as a leader is largely part of the solution. That's great. Yes, you're right. Such an important sector from the kind of use of materials design, all those aspects. And can you tell us a bit about how you're collaborating with other organizations to accelerate market transformation? The construction sector is quite a complex sector. It's a value chain of different stakeholders involved in the decision making process as well as in the implementation of the different solutions. If we want to be able to accelerate the maximum market transformation, we need to stop working in silos. Mainstreaming sustainability, mainstreaming innovations means that we have a better dialogue and a better collaboration between those. Different elements in the value chain. To achieve that, we need to bring people together to first better understand their common understanding of the situation. They need to share on the possible solutions. That's why we have created the Observatory for Sustainable Construction, which is a good tool for us through the barometer, through the magazine and through the tops that we organize. To share information on what people think of sustainable construction, what people expect and what solutions exist, we need also to demonstrate what is already possible on the market. Solutions exist, So it's more a matter of O to bring those solutions into life. So we need to cooperate with other stakeholders. If the investors, designers, developers, contractors to have better practices in place to have good business cases that we can feature to the rest of the world to say, look, this is what can be achieved. This is what is possible today. And once we have those good practices, those business cases. We can turn to policymakers because at some stage we need also to have better market conditions, to have better policies, more supportive of better construction. So to turn towards policymakers, we need also to engage together to demonstrate that it is not a matter of single interact. It is a common interest to have better policies to accelerate the market transformation of the built environment. To do that, we have different kinds of collaboration. With stakeholders who trade associations, but also through ADUC coalitions with different kinds of stakeholders, which is very important is to embark the entire value chain into this different kind of coalitions. Great. I think that's such an important way of looking at it as a system and, and, and all those parts in the system. And I agree that you know to to meet the speed us understanding how these things come together as systems from policymakers through the value chain is so important. So with that, are you optimistic about our collective ability to meet these challenges? Ohh, yeah, we are, we are, we are definitely providing, we, I would say providing we, we, we move now, you know, we move now because, you know, remembering the, the, the importance of the construction sector in this, you know, climate change fight. We need also to, to remember that 80% of today's building will still be in place in 2015. And at the same time, uh, you know, taking into account the increased urbanization, the increase of population in the developing world, but also in their dynamic countries like Canada, almost all Australia, half of the building that will exist in 2050 needs to be constructed between now and 2050. So there's, here, there's a huge opportunity to build with light and sustainable construction using psychopath. Solutions building that will be low carbon embedded or that will be such that we have such a good insulation that obviously there will be much less need of of energy to warm or to cool them. So both working on the construction side and the operation side of the new building will definitely help to achieve the the the the very low carbon I would see. Economy that we are all trying to build, but it takes time so you know a week is a week a month is a month we need to we need to be right on it now and we have the solution. I mean the good news the good news is that you know contrary to other sectors when you need technological and leapfrog in the construction sector, the solution exists. We have additives to put, you know the to put in in in cement or concrete so that they. Got low carbon? We have insulation envelope. Samba has submissions so we we can work on it right now. Maybe to add on what Claire said, definitely we have already a solutions to meet most of the challenges and we know that because we are mainstreaming more and more sustainability into our innovation processes, we will have better and better solutions. Even so, we are optimistic that we will do better and better and we can be also optimistic because we see that the different stakeholders start to share the same. Conviction that we need to scale up and the identification of the levels is already there. We need to better train, to better educate the market we need and the professionals we need to raise awareness among the general public and we need also to secure the financing. So this identification of the levels is there. So it's more today to meet those challenges to find the. Way to better educate, better trained, better inform and better finance the project. So we are already one step further, not not thinking of what to do but how to do it. Yeah, and to and to and to revoke on what uh, what you said Pascal, I think what is interesting also is the ability of the sector and of Sandoval to to innovate in last year. You certainly know that Sugar is being the first player in the world to achieve Lindsey reproduction scope one and two in flat glass as an example that we are also the first manufacturer to test. The flat glass production with 30% androgen replacing natural gas all we are also the first producer to be able to to start a 100% decarboxylating production of plasterboard in Norway by the electrification of the of of of the blood. So you know, we are also innovating each and every day so that we we are putting on the market low carbon offer to maximize. Are in fact and we are also decreasing our own footprint by, you know, changing our energy mix as an as an example. That's great. Well, thanks to both of you and it's really great to hear you talking through these innovative approaches that you've been taking at sang about and to really Dr. sustainability through in the business and and get a sense that overarching strategy. So thank you both. And to find out more about Sangban's projects, learn how you can integrate them into your organization strategy, join us at Climate Week NYC on September the 22nd to the 29th. And thank you very much and goodbye. Thank you, bye.