Courageous Sustainability: 3 Highlights from our Sustainability Journey in 2022
Taking the first steps in almost any ambition requires courage. That applied even to writing this blog, albeit it not being my first piece of writing. At first, I had a blank document in front of me and a few flimsy ideas. Nevertheless, after sparring with a colleague about the topic of the blog I had built some courage and taken my first step toward composing this text. And before I knew it, I had generated a list of topics for discussion, which turned into a draft and later a final version.
In a similar manner, the journey toward sustainability requires courage. We like to say that we started our Sustainability Journey a few years back when we started developing strategy and goals, both short- and long-term, for sustainability. Taking the first steps on this journey was exciting, but also slightly intimidating. Thoughts about wanting to find the best and brightest solutions immediately in the beginning and worrying about not meeting the standards of different stakeholders were present.
Today, I am filled with pride as I look at all the accomplishments of 2022 summarized in our Sustainability Report for the year. The first steps we took quite a while back have transformed into a journey in which we take new steps daily. I have listed 3 exciting steps we took in 2022, which can be embraced by any company here:
- Our Sustainability Day
- In May of 2022, we held our first Sustainability Day on which we introduced new policies relating to sustainability and had some related activities to foster conversations and innovations related to sustainability.
- The aim was to raise awareness of our sustainability program and our achievements and challenges. We reached this goal and as a result, decided to make the day an annual tradition for Evitec.
- Sustainable Industry Solutions
- In 2022, we started a couple of projects which dive into analyzing the sustainability of our industry, which for us means the fintech business.
- Firstly, we began investigating Green Coding with the aim of finding better ways of developing products and solutions which are as efficient as possible.
- Secondly, we also launched a Sustainable Digitalization project. This project aims to study the meaning of sustainable digitalization to ensure that our products and solutions work as drivers for a smarter, stronger, and more sustainable tomorrow.
- EcoVadis Rating
- Already in 2021, we decided to make annual EcoVadis assessments to have an external party analyze our sustainability efforts and suggest areas of improvement. Based on our 2022 review, we earned an EcoVadis Bronze Batch for our sustainability efforts as our overall ranking exceeded industry averages. We also received a list of suggestions for new developments, which we are excited to work on.
More about these topics and others can be found in our Sustainability Report for 2022.
For any company or anyone else for that matter, struggling with taking the first step toward sustainability, the news is good. In just a few years we have developed a sustainability program, which involves all our stakeholders and have embarked on our sustainability journey, which takes us toward a brighter tomorrow step by step each day. All that is required is the courage to take the first step. Next steps will follow.
