Practical Sustainability Circular Commerce, Smarter Spaces, and Happier Humans

PRACTICAL SUSTAINABILITY MODEL

SUSTAINABILITY, EVOLUTION, AND OPPORTUNITY

BLACK EARTH, ARCHITECTING AMAZONIA

The first Europeans in the Amazon reported people living in the rain forest, villages, and farms ribboned along the river with massive cities in the distance.1 Two centuries later, these reports were dismissed, believing the Amazon’s soils were too poor in nutrients to support large numbers of people, let alone cities and civilizations.

Then modern science changed everything. Researchers created a digital twin of southern Amazonia—a soft copy of the region, allowing them to digitally peel back the jungle canopy and see what’s underneath. The result? Traces of a civilization ten million strong, and cities linked with villages, all interconnected by radiating roads in a system of systems.

How did the Amazon support so many people? They used a technology called terra preta, an ultra-fertile regenerative super soil, a carbon sink reportedly able to retain up to six times more carbon than normal—extremely useful if you’re trying to get to Net-Zero.

Terra preta was considered a natural phenomenon until as late as the 1990s.5 Then experts became aware that its mix of charcoal, bone, compost, and manure pointed to human origins.6 The broader implications are shocking—humans architected Amazonia and helped construct the rain forest. These were agrarian smart cities, and the technology was the very ground beneath their feet—a regenerative, fertile mix like soil on steroids. If so-called primitive peoples could engineer a sustainable ecosystem, why not us today?

GREEN MOUNTAIN, EDEN IN ASCENSION

In 1836, a young Charles Darwin prepared to leave for Ascension Island. Thirty-four square miles small, Ascension Island sits a thousand miles west of Africa and fourteen hundred miles east of Brazil. On arrival, Darwin looked up and saw ‘The Peak,’ a mountain rising 2,818 feet into the mist. It was bare, except for a single, solitary tree. This barren biosphere sparked an idea and a vision in Darwin’s mind—why not test evolution by introducing new, non-native species of flora and fauna to the island from around the world?

Ascension became a laboratory and an experiment. Darwin’s best friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, arrived on the island and put Darwin’s idea into action seven years later. Hooker eventually succeeded his father as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew,8 site of the largest and most diverse botanical collection on Earth9 —and provided the opening for Hooker to pull strings to aid the experiment.

In a public-private partnership with the Royal Navy, Hooker created a green, global supply chain into Kew, and then onto Ascension. First came the trees by the thousands, trapping The Peak’s mountain mist, creating a cloud forest saturated in moisture. Then came the birds and the fruit.

In under a century, The Peak was terraformed into a tiny Eden and renamed Green Mountain. What was once species-poor became species-rich. Sparse ferns became a lush forest, and the natural ecological timescales of millennia shrunk down into decades. Ascension’s cloud forest, however, is different from every other on Earth—it’s artificial, not natural or pristine at all. Like terra preta in the Amazon, it’s designed and built by humans who hacked evolution.

Over time, humans evolved the Amazon and Ascension into novel, sustainable ecologies. These lessons from the past provide clues to our present. Together, they might even guide our future when we leave this planet.

A CHANGED WORLD

Sustainability is hardly a new concept, as the earlier examples suggest. The Industrial Age distracted humanity through the incredible inventions and gains in efficiency that lifted the standard of living for many millions of people and created the middle class that sustained democracy. Humans saw the Earth mainly as an infinite source of 4 PRACTICAL SUSTAINABILITY resources, given the much lower population base and energy consumption (one billion people and six terawatt-hours in 1800, compared to nearly eight billion people and 173K TWh in 201911,12). As the twenty-first century gained steam, a new awareness took hold about Earth’s finite resources and fragile ecosystem.

Then events in 2020 threatened us with a new Dark Age. A “known-unknown,” the COVID-19 pandemic opened our eyes to the fact that we were sorely unprepared for its threat. The pandemic brought entire industries to a halt. Global supply chains stretched to the breaking point; millions were unemployed within weeks, and buildings were left uninhabited. As a society, we believed that becoming digital meant controlling our future, yet we must also respect the natural part of our existence and ability to thrive. COVID gave us a preview of the potential consequences we all face when unable to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

At the same time, people saw the possibility of the planet healing itself during this time of pause, with a brief drop in emissions coupled with businesses and workers adopting the new norm.13 Our response to COVID highlighted the absolute necessity for resilience, along with the urgency of climate change and its corrective possibilities. Then the world came together to develop and distribute vaccines that set in motion a return to more in-person social and business activities. In our return to the new norm, we also accelerated our efforts to battle climate change and the threat to our economic well-being and very existence.

Taken together, the events of the past decade have accelerated the need for businesses and buildings to do more—they need to become symbols of the era, of progress. Where once it was commerce and grand structures, enterprises now need to reflect and convey a message to stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, partners, and society.

In the preface to his 2021 book, Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Klaus Schwab recalls the first call from Beijing about COVID-19. He describes it as “an AC/BC moment when attention shifted from the time before COVID-19 to the reality that set in after COVID-19.”

Professor Schwab mentioned how “one thing has changed in the interim period between ‘BC’ and ‘AC’…a greater understanding among the population, business leaders, and government that creating a better world would require working together.”

Together with heightened expectations, all this change has coincided with technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and machine learning reaching a tipping point in functionality, price point, and adoption. Digital tech has crossed the chasm, and leaders have difficulty envisioning the potential combined impact of these converging exponential technologies.

For instance, the market rapidly adopted cloud computing in the past decade, aggregating large amounts of data from disparate sources, and applied highly scalable computing power. Sensors have changed the market, driven by a combination of smartphones and intelligence at the edge. Consumer devices like iPads and smartphones have a depth-finding laser scanner, which was unimaginable until recently. These sensors are not only proliferating, but they’re also extremely lightweight, very low power, and inexpensive.

NEW REQUIREMENTS, NEW SOLUTIONS

While the pandemic significantly accelerated change, it was hardly the only trend, and in fact, several underlying trends were already in motion.

The most powerful and profitable companies have demonstrated a clear path to a carbon-neutral future, with a steady stream of new commitments. Sustainability efforts are sustainable only if leaders take a science-based approach and intertwine them with the operating model, company culture, and bottom line. At Infosys, we found that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts are best developed organically, with an eye toward measurable change rather than checking boxes. The emergence of exponential technologies and new mindsets allows companies to chase these lofty goals practically without dragging down the financials. The virtuous cycle need not be a cost center.

To a great degree, the elements needed to pursue sustainability are already in place; it’s just that companies have not yet unlocked their full potential. Five overarching trends have raised sustainability to be on the boardroom agenda simultaneously and a priority for first-line employees, and here is why:

1. Environment: Sustainability is now on the boardroom agenda with an emphasis on reducing the carbon footprint and reduced waste. Buildings generate 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and are the most prominent factor to meet United Nations and Paris Agreement goals.

2. Digital technologies: At the same time, there has been a convergence of exponential technologies like cloud, AI, ML, data, Internet of Things, and computational power. The possibilities seem endless, but applying all this tech to buildings and supply chains is still evolving.

3. Energy transmission: Power purchase agreements (PPAs) manage energy assets, provide low carbon power, heating and cooling, and campus mobility driven by intelligent digital platforms. Integrated Energy-as-a-Service enables campuses and cities to use energy more efficiently and optimize supply and demand across multiple users and assets.

4. Social: Society expects organizations to aid their people’s development and provide meaningful opportunities for all employees—and even their communities—through diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.

5. Financial: From counting coins to constraining carbon, finance takes a holistic approach, analyzing ESG and traditional financial performance in a unified view. Auditing and portfolio management have expanded to include sustainability in risk management and credit ratings.

The sustainability discussion can no longer be one of high-minded, impractical theories addressing aspirational goals targeted for 2050. Nor can sustainability be a series of tactical, low-impact activities that comply with regulations and signal virtue but do not make a real difference. At Infosys, we have experienced this during our ten-year journey to carbon neutrality and delivered social initiatives at scale in our communities. This activity-outcome gap led us to envision and develop a new, evolved sustainability model for the stakeholder capitalism era.

THE CASE FOR PRACTICAL SUSTAINABILITY

NAVIGATING THE SUSTAINABILITY MAZE

This book is for optimistic yet clear-eyed practitioners on sustainability concepts that are practical: grounded in science, acknowledged by human behavior, and focused on outcomes. We define Practical Sustainability as continuous environmental, social, and governance innovation based on science, human-centric technology, and regenerative thinking. It is urgent, focused on outcomes, and something to be done now instead of viewed as an abstract concept.

The authors wrote this book based on Infosys’ experience in our sustainability journey, client portfolios of similar work, and primary research from the Infosys Knowledge Institute. For context, Infosys is a global technology and engineering services firm founded in 1981. It operates fifty million square feet of its buildings, across eighteen campuses and offices in fifty countries, with 270,000 full-time employees.

In the past decade, Infosys’ own experience provided an abundance of data points as to what works and what does not. How do we know Practical Sustainability works? Through intelligent automation, Infosys reduced carbon emissions by 9.3% year over year for ten years (helping us become carbon neutral) and reduced water consumption by 60%. We also reduced per capita energy usage by 55% ($225M in energy savings) and certified twenty-seven million square feet as the highest-rated green buildings. We also eliminated single-use plastics and achieved 100% recycling of plastic waste across operations. At the same time, we increased our employee count to 270,000, more than 160% growth since 2008, yet only 20% growth in energy usage. Equally important, Practical Sustainability improved employee productivity and experience measured through efficient desk and room-booking services and improved visitor satisfaction-rate experience from site entry to exit.

Our social initiatives matched these environmental results, where Infosys also invested heavily of its time, talent, and treasure to help the communities and countries in which it operates. Sixty thousand libraries were refurbished, a daily hot midday meal was provided for one million students (to keep them in school), and thousands of schools and millions of students were assisted with computer science education. The common theme across initiatives was to apply our expertise to solve a business or technical problem with social impact in a quantifiable way. That is the essence of Practical Sustainability—to use business expertise through the lens of ESG and hold initiatives to a science-based, financially sound standard.

Infosys has also helped numerous companies start or continue their journeys to Practical Sustainability. However, this book is not about Infosys—the authors’ primary goal is to provide insights and recommendations to assist individuals, companies, and governments in improving sustainable practices, reducing energy costs, and enhancing user experience. While Practical Sustainability is a fresh approach to a significant business trend, it is also much more— the more of these ideas that are shared and implemented, the better for all.

As we progressed on our journey and served clients in the practical aspects of sustainability, a fundamental question emerged:

How do leading organizations use circular commerce and smart spaces to achieve sustainability targets while staying strong financially?

It is hard enough to be profitable through disruption—how on Earth can a company also meet environmental targets, support social goals, and demonstrate good governance? Others were asking the same question because we saw Practical Sustainability emerge as top of mind in discussions with our clients and industry analysts as they explored these programs. Along the way, we delivered solutions for individual buildings, campuses, multi-tenant facilities, stadiums, airports, and various public infrastructures—across all program phases, from concept through delivery and operations.

The research for this book incorporates and extends earlier Infosys research, tracking the progress of Global 2000 companies. It also includes our ten-year journey and interviews with executives of leading companies that provide technology and services in the ESG ecosystem.

Over the last few years, we surveyed these stakeholders and analyzed findings to understand trends, develop insights, and provide recommendations. There are few playbooks set yet for the still-emerging technology wave in sustainability. We offer this book as a guide and recommend a consultative approach with a robust partner ecosystem and consortium-supported innovation.