FIDI sustainability champion, Magali Horbert, explains the background to the new FIDI carbon calculation initiative and its significance to the industry.
Early in 2024, FIDI will launch its new carbon calculation tool to help Affiliates calculate their CO2 emissions and, in doing so, provide the data that they will need for reporting, and to help them achieve their goal of reducing emissions over time.
In the future, all companies will have to report on their carbon footprint, whether they like it or not. As legislators around the world are ramping up rules and legislation to make businesses prove their sustainability credentials, carbon accounting is at the heart of it all. But just like financial accounting, it’s complicated and can get messy very quickly.
If you want to know how your business is doing, you need a reference to compare your evolution. It is a given that we can’t make educated decisions if we don’t have some sort of reliable baseline to benchmark our targets and efforts. In terms of corporate sustainability, what we are seeing currently is unfortunately very far from perfect. Many companies are making commitments to ‘net zero’ and carbon neutral futures, without a clear plan or science-based targets. There is no common agreement or standardised approach as to what should be measured and how, and no real accountability for the reliability of the reported data. We are also seeing small suppliers struggling to keep up with the many different (and sometimes conflicting) requests to report their sustainability efforts through a variety of platforms and reporting frameworks. This Wild West of sustainability reporting is not leading us anywhere, and most definitely not to a more sustainable way of doing business.
Stepping up on carbon footprint
One of the main tasks of an association such as FIDI is to help its members tackle the most pressing industry-wide challenges, so that they can focus on doing business. And from what we have been hearing from FIDI Affiliates and other industry players, sustainability reporting is a big pain point that companies across the supply chain are currently facing. In the global mobility world, the international household goods moving sector is also often singled out as the ‘footprint heavy’ part of the industry. With all of this in mind, and after long reflection, FIDI has decided to provide a carbon calculation tool for our members and their partners, to solve at least one part of their sustainability reporting challenge ...
Photo: Magali Horbert.