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Telco customers are looking for a bigger push from the companies on environmental concerns
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Reducing scope 3 emissions is key for Orange Business
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Orange Business CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompre and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins signed a sustainability MoU in person at MWC in Barcelona
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, BARCELONA – Cisco and Orange Business signed a memorandum of understanding Monday at MWC to deepen their efforts on sustainability as their customers look for a bigger push from the companies on environmental concerns.
Orange Business CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompre said that the MoU was focused on reducing scope 3 carbon emissions from Orange and Cisco. These are emissions produced when making and transporting products. Clearly this would be major footprint for both Cisco and Orange.
You can see a handy guide to what scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions are here.
Mousnier Lompre said that the companies would aim to reduce their emissions by measuring "our shared carbon trajectory so that we commit together on numbers and on a decarbonization plan. You cannot fix what you cannot measure," she said.
The Orange CEO also committed her company along with Cisco to circular economic practices "by deploying reconditioned kits and collecting retired deals for reuse and recycling," she said.
"I think European customers have actually been ahead of the rest of the world around sustainability," Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins commented. "So this is a very exciting announcement for us."
The Cisco CEO even claimed that his company has been working under the premises of circular economy for "many years".
Mousnier-Lompre and Robbins signed the MoU live on stage.
These are lofty aims from the company leaders, however the question is: Will they actually be achieved on the ground?
One box
Laurent Godicheau, Orange's chief strategy and sustainability officer and Cisco's Vikas Butaney, VP of SD-WAN, cloud and industrial IoT attempted to answer some of those questions in a Q&A session after.
Godicheau said that the first thing the companies intend to do to meet their scope 3 aims is to reduce the number of boxes they use to implement services for customers.
"Today, when we connect clients, we use one box for each function, right?" Godicheau said. "Connecting for access. We use one box. For the software which is one box...we have a project to use less boxes, one box for all the functions."
This is clearly a simple way to reduce emissions for the companies."Once we have that footprint, then we can turn on more and more services on top of that." Butaney said.
So, this is the biggest practical thing Cisco and Orange can do to cope with their scope first.
This story was originally published on our sister site Silverlinings.
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