The technology sector, known for its limitless ingenuity and rapid pace of innovation, has long been a pioneer in embracing sustainable development. Sustainable technology was one of Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023.
As technological advancements become increasingly integrated into every facet of people’s lives, particularly with billions using mobile technologies to access an array of life-enhancing services, technology companies must now deeply embed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into every facet of their business to help individuals, society, and the world.
ESG initiatives are gaining steam as technology companies refine how they measure progress toward achieving their social goals and communicating positive values. The key to embracing ESG is to embody and integrate these principles across every aspect of the business, rather than conducting them as isolated sideline projects, with four critical strategies:
- Ensure that all operations and compliance promote health and sustainability.
- Protect the environment through a low-carbon business model.
- Improve the lives of millions with human-oriented innovation.
- Engage with emerging companies throughout the ecosystem to promote common goals.
Putting values into practice
Technology companies’ commitment to ESG must be apparent in all their offerings to inspire their workforce, partners, and customers to think, create, and believe in sustainable development and innovation. Providing professional, reliable, and cutting-edge products and services with ESG values can bring meaningful change to people’s lives. And building social responsibility is critical to support the entire ecosystem.
Here are three ways technology leaders must put their ESG values into practice:
- Build ESG into your business and supply chain.
With the global climate crisis and other sustainability challenges at the forefront of public debate, technology organizations must integrate environmental initiatives into every aspect of manufacturing and distribution. They must invest as much in carbon neutrality as they do in innovation.
Tech companies can make a significant contribution to sustainability by reducing their carbon footprint at every stage of the product life cycle. Achieving the critical benchmark of carbon neutrality requires determination and patience—but small changes add up.
The long-term roadmap for low-carbon development is helping OPPO work toward carbon neutrality: decarbonization of manufacturing, reducing products’ carbon footprint, low-carbon investment, digital carbon management, and collaboration in the development of climate change standards.
To honor its pledge to make operations carbon-neutral by 2050, OPPO in 2022 began measuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its global operations as the basis of carbon-reduction strategy. By the end of the year, energy-saving and emission-reducing measures were already cutting 6,000 tons of GHGs annually. OPPO’s first purposefully built data center, the Binhaiwan Bay Low-Carbon Green Data Centre, runs on 100% clean energy.
Achieving sustainability objectives means applying an inventive mentality to the full lifecycle of products. Starting this year, to assure that all packaging materials are composed of 100% biodegradable materials, OPPO is removing almost all plastic materials from the external packaging of mobile phone devices, including the company’s latest innovation, the foldable Find N2 Flip phone.
- Innovate for individuals and communities, not just products.
Tech companies must excel at developing cutting-edge products that create sustainable value for society and solve its pressing problems. This principle integrates in OPPO’s corporate mission of “Technology for Mankind, Kindness for the World.” The company expresses this ongoing and growing commitment to sustainability through thought leadership, products, and continual innovation.
In 2022, OPPO published Zero-Power Communication White Paper, stating its technological stance and exploring development potential. At Mobile World Congress in 2023, OPPO introduced Zero-Power Tag: a compact, affordable, passive Internet of Experience (IoE) technology that enables communication in a broader range by using radio-frequency energy from the environment instead of batteries, while also reducing the power consumption of everyday IoE devices and sensors.
Traditional batteries are a difficult sustainability challenge. They’re costly to make, they die quickly, and once they do, they become hazardous waste.
OPPO’s innovative system-level Battery Health Engine (BHE) can safeguard the health and extend the longevity of smartphone batteries. By adjusting the charging currency of lithium batteries in real time and continually repairing electrodes, BHE has doubled the industry average for smartphone-battery lifespan, maintaining battery capacity by up to 80% over 1,600 charge cycles, or four years of typical usage—making it the world’s most durable smartphone battery.
- Encourage emerging tech companies to step up.
The world is full of new and emerging innovators dedicated to using technology to improve lives. Large regional and global technology brands that have the reach to make a massive difference also have the responsibility to support these emerging organizations on their ESG journeys for exponential impact and to narrow the great technology divide around the world.
To lead the technology sector on social responsibility, OPPO has gone beyond incorporating ESG initiatives into its own manufacturing and innovations and supports innovative startups through the OPPO Research Institute Innovation Accelerator program it launched in 2022.
Through this new accelerator, OPPO helps emerging technology companies assume social responsibility as they create innovative products, by providing each of up to 10 entrepreneurs with $46,000 in financing to help them develop their proposals and find opportunities for research and development support, partnerships, funding, publicity, and commercialization.
Letting values lead
A changing world means tech companies need to become greater leaders and greater thinkers than ever before. Companies that only make cell phones will eventually be eliminated by competitors that meet their customers’ evolving needs, seeking out new possibilities in scenarios of IoE and taking ESG-driven breakthroughs to the market.
Just as the technology sector drives global innovation, it must also lead on social and environmental responsibility. Tech companies have the reach, tools, and mandate to take the lead in building a better future. A mission-driven approach needs to inform every organization at every stage: product design, manufacturing, operations, work environments, and end users. All tech businesses are global citizens, and we all need to embed ESG principles in everything we do.
Learn more about OPPO’s sustainability-focused innovation and technology.
