Nowadays, companies face many challenges regarding sustainability. They need to comply with already implemented as well as upcoming environmental and social standards and regulations, to easily integrate sustainability into their existing business processes. The recent EU Green deal will put even more pressure on companies in that regard.
Carbon emissions caused by the industry have a significant impact on climate change. Besides, customer demand for reliable CO2 emission data and environmental responsibility is growing.
As a consequence, companies must seek to reduce their ecological footprint and adjust the way they operate. They will have to learn how to manage their sustainability in an efficient and transparent manner. Companies will need to be able to showcase their carbon emissions and their policy towards sustainability.
Therefore, companies must be able to rely on a solid partner for sustainability.
WAVES, Worldwide Added Values for Environment & Sustainability, offers a brand-new module-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) to manage the sustainability of companies.
Using the powerful capabilities offered by cloud technologies, WAVES created the first Sustainablility Management Platform (SMP). The modules of the SMP can be seamlessly connected with the customer’s IT system via interfaces. The platform processes real-time data with the input of customer’s data. An algorithm then calculates the carbon footprints, applying latest standards and methodology and in full compliance with current regulations.
Calculating carbon footprints needs several parameters. Sometimes, some of these parameters might not be available within the customer IT system. Then, the Sustainability Management Platform uses Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analysis to make the most accurate assumption based on the latest available data and fills the gaps to provide the most precise result.
By analyzing the dashboards generated by the platform and using the results of the calculations, managers get transparency on carbon footprints. The platform allows managers to monitor their impact on the environment and society as well as their sustainability in a transparent way, to make the right decisions towards sustainability (e.g., which truck has the lowest fuel consumption and carbon emission, which energy source should be used, decide on the investment in new truck types for the next years).
WAVES’ vision is to make sustainability visible. The use of the SMP should lead to a change in behavior, facilitate decision-making towards sustainability and ultimately, enable circular economy.
Besides the ability to calculate the carbon footprint along the entire supply chain and across different transport modes, it can also calculate emissions from production sites, and provide a global picture of the total carbon footprint of products. One day, when circular economy has become a reality, a consumer will be able to base a buying decision of a product not only on the price or the brand, but also on the real carbon footprint over its lifecycle.
As a start-up, WAVES addresses the logistics sector in the first step since transports are the second biggest source of CO2 emissions with impact on climate change, first one being energy sourcing. WAVES plans to offer further solutions for all other sectors such as automotive, food and beverages, manufacturing, construction, or fashion in the near future.