5.2 Assign a sustainability advocate
Business Strategy And Product Management
Appoint a sustainability advocate who is provided with what they require to speak about and for issues relating to sustainability.
Criteria
- Advocate for sustainability: Machine-testable
Assign a sustainability advocate with specific digital expertise and provide them with the resources, budget, tools, and time they need to achieve their stated goals. In some organizations, expanding this into a climate working group comprising motivated individuals can add further benefits.- Chief sustainability officer
- Does Your Organization Need a Chief Sustainability Officer?
- GPF – General Policy Framework (PDF) – 1.3 – Strategy (Ecodesign Supervisor)
- How effective is sustainability advocacy?
- Organizing for sustainability success
- Our Microsoft sustainability journey
- United Nations SDGS – Goal 1 – Poverty
- United Nations SDGS – Goal 4 – Education
- United Nations SDGS – Goal 12 – Consumption & Production
- United Nations SDGS – Goal 13 – Climate Change
Benefits
- Accessibility
Nominating a sustainability representative helps the organization remove barriers to access. These can inherently cost bandwidth, have monetary value, and carry potential legal implications. - Environment
Appointing dedicated sustainability representatives means they can maintain quality assurance and guide decisions that measurably reduce the environmental impact of your digital products and services. - Privacy
Having dedicated sustainability representatives on the team enables them to maintain intersectional data privacy standards and watch out for legal compliance issues within the organization. - Social Equity
Ensuring someone on the team is dedicated to these concerns will help to reduce the digital divide through internal awareness raising and requesting features or information be provided to support those, for example on older devices or in low-bandwidth areas.
GRI
- Materials: Medium
- Energy: Medium
- Water: Medium
- Emissions: Medium