sustainability

Environmental Sustainability has become a top business priority for CEOs, demanding aligned performance from sourcing. Therefore, by 2026, 70% of technology sourcing, procurement and vendor management (SPVM) leaders will have environmental-sustainability-aligned performance objectives for their functions, according to research by Gartner.

At least 70 cities in Europe can now prevent huge amounts of waste from ending up in the sea. This has been demonstrated in the city of Aarhus in Denmark, where the robot SeaProtectorOne, made by All In On Green, collected over 100,000 pieces of waste from the city’s river in just 20 months. The technology thus shows how much pollution the city is otherwise sending into the marine environment.

In Las Vegas Gartner highlighted the six trends that will have significant impact on infrastructure and operations (I&O) over the next 12 to 18 months. Automation and sustainability are set to play an important part in this timeframe.

A new Gartner survey revealed that 87% of business leaders expect to increase their organisation’s investment in sustainability over the next two years. Customers are the primary stakeholder group creating pressure for organisations to invest or act on sustainability issues, selected by 80% of executives, followed by investors (60%) and regulators (55%).

The new global economic reality, combined with an unprecedented labour shortage, is encouraging companies to reconsider sustainability strategies. Until recently, sustainability has been synonymous with environmental goals for many businesses and, as a result, treated as an add on to corporate strategy. Sustainability can no longer be considered in isolation. 

Robots can be a very powerful tool in the energy transition, says Elinor Doubell, VP Digital Science at bp, in this report from the European Robotics Fair. Earlier this week she was one of the keynote speakers on robotics and sustainability. In this video she talks to Rocking Robots about the way robots change the way of working at bp.

A quarter of the worlds energy is lost due to friction, corrosion and wear. Robots are machines with movable parts, and the machines that are used to make them obviously have moving parts too. This makes lubrication an interesting but largely ignored part of sustainability in robotics. That is why Castrol Industrial presented at the opening keynote at the European Robotics Forum in Rotterdam. Rocking Robots discussed the importance of reducing friction in robotics with Susan Frame of Castrol Industrial.

The role of finance changes from compliance to driving environmental and socially responsible value. And the CFO is at the heart of these changes. One of the instruments to accommodate this change, is robotic process automation (RPA). Steve Faulkner, leading the CFO practice with UiPath, a global RPA technology leader. Rocking Robots discussed with him the challenges CFOs are currently facing.

London department store Selfridges showcases the future role of robotics in retail. An ABB robot demonstrates 3D printing using upcycled Parley Ocean Plastic to create a range of designer items. Personalized items can be ordered on site by customers and produced in-situ by the robot, ready for purchase.

Recently IDC has published the whitepaper  Automation as a Force for Good – 6 Steps to Transform Theory into Practice. In this study authors Angela Salmeron and Neil Ward-Dutton discuss the role of automation in supporting companies with their ESG programs, given the trend that 47% of organizations are planning to introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to the workplace in the next 18 months, 39%  intend to implement other process automation technologies (including workflow automation), and 63% are planning to add task-focused apps on mobile devices.