Digital transformations in Sustainability
Traditional methods of measuring environmental and sustainability impacts often come with challenges and limitations. For example, environmental impact assessments (EIA) and life cycle assessments (LCA) typically require large amounts of investment, time, and expertise. This creates a burden on businesses, discouraging them from pursuing sustainability initiatives.
These challenges create opportunities for innovative solutions. Emerging digital platforms aim to break these barriers and provide accessible tools for complex tasks. This includes data collection, resource tracking, emission calculations, gap analyses, and sustainability reporting.
The Power of Partnerships and Collective Responsibility
When assessing the impacts of a product or process, it is important to look at the whole supply chain. Engaging business partners, suppliers, and external stakeholders with shared goals yields larger sustainability impacts than individual efforts. By building trust, communication, and transparency, industries can drive impact collectively.
Digital platforms facilitate communication through accessibility, clear objectives, and the simplification of sustainability initiatives. In addition, they open channels for simultaneous involvement across multiple departments or organizations. This creates opportunities for more coordinated efforts and collective movement towards global sustainability.
Driving Circular Economy through Digitalization
Approaching sustainability collectively allows for better resource management and efficiency. Connected supply chains therefore save costs while reducing emissions. By optimizing resources and streamlining operations, businesses can work on improving end-of-life stages of their products. This further minimizes waste and drives circularity both economically and environmentally.
The rise of digital platforms empowers a new type of relationship between companies – from standard competitiveness to collaboration in shared visions and goals. Through interconnectedness, businesses can create shared value and pave a path to a sustainable future.
How Opteinics Empowers Collaboration
For organizations looking to embrace digital sustainability, Opteinics offers a powerful solution. This intuitive platform simplifies environmental footprint analysis and enables companies to involve their partners in every step of the process. With Opteinics, businesses can quickly assess the impact of their supply chains, connect their partners, and share real-time results with stakeholders.
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References:
Barteková, E. and P. Börkey (2022), “Digitalisation for the transition to a resource efficient and circular economy”, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 192, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/6f6d18e7-en.
Popowicz, M., Katzer, N. J., Kettele, M., Schöggl, J. P., & Baumgartner, R. J. (2024). Digital technologies for life cycle assessment: a review and integrated combination framework. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 1-24.
Winickoff, D. et al. (2021), “Collaborative platforms for emerging technology: Creating convergence spaces”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 109, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ed1e030d-en.
