6 tips to improve ESG impact for Tech Startups

Eugénie Colonna d'Istria
Serena
Published in
9 min readNov 10, 2020

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Transferring to a responsible business model can be seen as an unavoidable constraint for players in Tech to stay relevant as they grow in size. However, the quicker you establish an ESG policy and integrate sustainability and fairness/inclusivity as a part of your firm’s DNA, the better off you will get in the middle to long run.

It is fundamental to understand that having an ESG policy today is an opportunity for growth more than a constraint. Simply put, it is a way to increase your business value and cut your costs.

How does it increase my business value? Identifying new product lines that are responsible and eco-designed will increase your revenue by attracting new talents and customers.

How does it cut my costs? Optimising your resource usage and increasing employees’ engagement will result in more productivity.

In this article, I selected alternative suppliers and a diversity of tools to help you increase your positive ESG impact as a Tech Startup.

Let’s begin! Here are some baby steps to a long lasting positive social and environmental impact.

🌻 Think about the little things

Tip #1 — Transition to a sustainable office management

Start by becoming a responsible buyer and selecting your suppliers and providers on environmental or social criteria.

Recycling process

A diversity of recycling brands exist nowadays, notably in France. Some of the most famous players include Joyeux Recycleurs, Lemon Tri, Elise, Feuille d’érable, Recyclage éco-citoyen.

These providers provide various services such as awareness on recycling processes, supply of recycling bins, recycling electronics and office furnitures, and collection of waste.

If you are looking to recycle “non recyclables” or industrial waste, Terracycle should be your solution.

Use of renewable energy

Switching to a green energy provider as never been easier. It is a very simple process that can even (often) drastically reduces your energy consumption and bill.

Check out tariffs from selected French providers to pick out the best deal for you: Enercoop, Urban Solar, Planète oui, Ilek, Plum energy.

Water, coffee and food suppliers

Again, these little changes go a long way! When choosing the best suppliers for you, you should immediately have the reflex to consider the environmental and social impact you indirectly provoke.

Some recommended suppliers: check out Castalie for water supply; Kawa Coffee and Miko Coffee (Puro Coffee) for coffee supply; and Ethiquable and Delicorner for office snacks.

Business cards and goodies

Same here!

Some recommended suppliers: get business cards from 100% recycled paper at Moo, find 100% eco-friendly gifts at GiftForChange and shop according to impact categories at DreamAct.

Events’ catering service and food waste management

This is win-win. Use the opportunity to affirm your environmental and social impact awareness and engagement during events with clients or investors:

Impact-driven events catering services: Mamayoka, Les cuistots migrateurs, Baluchon, Meet My Mama, Les Marmites Volantes, Exki.

Zero-waste policy events catering services: Karma, MonBanquet, Phénix.

Environmentally-friendly designed & produced cutlery, dishes and kitchen tools: Ecolomique, Compos Table, Bambaw.

Office furniture, supplies and maintenance

Making your office as “green” as possible — literally — with suppliers around the corner.

Office furniture — find responsible office furniture and supplies at Un bureau sur la Terre and sell your office furniture on Adopte un bureau.

Office maintenance and cleaning services — suppliers such as Cleany (Paris) and Auclair (Haute-Bretagne) are guaranteeing the use of eco-friendly products and “green” practices.

Printing purchase ESG-friendly first-hand printers and printing material at Lexmark. If you are not sure of the environmental impact of a printing service, search for the Imprim’vert label.

Other

If you have additional needs not mentioned above, you can compare a wide range of suppliers using Zei. This tool will help you pick out suppliers according to their social and environmental impact and find alternatives to your existing suppliers.

You can also use myLabel if you need to evaluate products according to their social and environmental impact and find alternatives that fit your requirements.

If changing your suppliers now is too much effort, try to encourage them to measure their carbon footprint or to diminish their CO2 emissions. You can run a supplier sustainability survey (download BCorp Template here).

On top of switching suppliers, take simple actions:

  • Purchase reusable lunch boxes and bottles for employees
  • Make your client events and team lunches vegetarian

💻 Choose your digital providers

Tip #2 — Manage your supply chain

As a technology startup, you most likely already use online signing tools such as Docusign, document processing tools such as Mindee and accounting softwares such as Azopio that reduce the amount of paperwork used and, therefore, reduces your carbon footprint.

Ready to go the extra mile ?

Digital tools

Search engines — switch to green search engines that do not sell your data and respect your privacy such as Ecosia, Lilo.org and Qwant. Though choice between the three? If your goal is a negative carbon footprint through carbon compensation (e.g. planting trees), then Ecosia is the right choice for you. If you wish to indirectly participate in a variety of environmental and social projects through your search engine, then Lilo.org is the right choice for you.

Web hostingAiso, Greengeeks, Infomaniak are green web hosting services. Web Neutral Project is another example of a green web hosting service that also provides you with the EcoWeb Certification.

Digital services

Web development — web development agencies employing handicapped and disadvantaged individuals include Numerik-ea and Simplon Pod.

Eco-design — if you are looking for a web development agency that practices eco design while employing disadvantages individuals, check out Ecedi. If you are looking for a business management consulting services to transform your business model, check out Imagin/able.

Outsourcing — if you are looking to outsource IT, back-office and data control service, Acces Inclusive Tech provides these services while having a social impact-driven business model. If you are looking to outsource digital tasks surrounding Artificial Intelligence and data processing, Isahit provides these services while having a social impact-driven business model.

For more information and to learn more about:

  • The environmental impact of digital services, check out GreenIT.fr
  • Eco-design thinking, check out avnir.org

Office supplies

It is no secret that buying second-hand material is eco-friendly and is a good cost reduction strategy for tech startups.

Some recommended providers to purchase second-hand computers, phones and other electronics: Ecodair, Plus de PC, Tradediscount, ATF Gaia, Backmarket, Recommerce.

If you are looking to rent material, Commown is renting responsible electronics.

On top of switching digital suppliers, taking the following actions will result in a long term reduction of GHG emissions:

  • Store your data in a country where energy is low in carbon (France being top 3)
  • Avoid duplicates of phones for employees and use double numbers or sim cards
  • Build a responsible website (check out this article from Agricool for further guidance)
  • Clean your mailbox to reduce your environmental impact (check out Cleanfox’s tool to automate this process)
  • Securely store your visitors’ data anonymously to be 100% GDPR and CCPA compliant in a carbon effective way (check out Cabin’s solution for a carbon-aware web analytics service)

🌍 Respond to climate change

Tip #3 — Measure and reduce your carbon footprint

You are probably wondering why measuring and reducing your carbon footprint is relevant for a tech startup. Well, we have some inspiration for you. Here is a podcast and a blogpost by Shine on why you should take this extra step:

Measure and track your carbon footprint

They are various ways you could produce a carbon footprint report.

Web applications — new players such Carbo and Aktio calculate your carbon footprint and give you access to full report on their platform that you can follow throughout the years. Another innovative approach is to track your carbon footprint through your firm’s expenses to get an idea of what are your main sources of GHG emissions. This is possible for SMEs and individuals on Greenly’s application.

Manual — a more laborious and free way to calculate your carbon footprint is by using templates available on MicMac and Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Take actions for the planet

As a first step, check out your website’s GHG emissions by using Website Carbon’s tool. It is free and only requires the website’s url.

Carbon compensation — when it comes to carbon compensation, you have various options to make a positive environmental impact. You can choose to plant a tree and participate in protecting biodiversity through Ecotree, Purproject, Planete Urgence, WeForest and Reforestation Action. You can also choose to become a member of the 1% for the Planet initiative by committing to give 1% of gross sales each year to environmental causes.

Donations — other innovative donation solutions include microDON, a platform through which your employees and/or founders can decide to make regular micro donations through rounding payments or salaries. Heoh is another donation payment solutions with which you can follow your donations’ impact, generate your tax receipt, and choose where to donate. You may also use Goodeed, which is an internet video advertising company that operates on a charity model.

Coaching application — on the daily, always acting in the best interest of the planet might be tricky. If you need a little push, try out the WWF Programme App called WAG that educates people on ecology and challenges them to take actions everyday.

Tip #4 — Establish a sustainable transportation policy

It goes without saying that the Covid-19 crisis has taught all of us that a video conference meeting is a good enough alternative. If possible, avoid travelling to meet clients in person and take advantage of the sanitary crisis to use video conferencing tools instead.

Transportations — if you need to commute, use “soft” transportation such as biking, co-driving, electric vehicles, or another great invention: walking.

For longer trips, try to reduce the plane travelling to the maximum possible. You can make up rules at the firm-level such as “no trip in France is allowed when the time difference with taking a train is less than 2 hours”.

To sum up, when it comes to taking actions against climate change, one simple rule applies here: reduce your GHG emissions to the maximum possible and compensate for the rest.

👫 Optimise your governance scheme

Tip #5 — Treat your workers well

Value diversity when recruiting

You can reach out to diversity-orientated recruitment or consultancy services such as BAME recruitment (UK).

Try out 50inTech to recruit more women in your product/tech team.

Stimulate employees’ engagement

Measure employees’ engagement regularly to foster trust and reduce turnover. Some recommended tools: Culture Amp, Bloom at work, Supermood, OfficeVibe, Bleexo.

You can also kill two birds with one scone and engage your employees through an impact-driven project. Some recommended tools: Alayagood, Vendredi, Teamstarter.

Other tips

  • Reduce employees’ financial stress by giving them access to wage savings
  • Incentivise employees with BSPCE
  • Have a transparent salary scale

🚀 Think bigger

Tip #6 — Build trust and foster innovation

When it comes to going the extra mile, the opportunities are endless. Here are some actions to inspire you:

  • Eco-conceive/eco-conceptualise your new product lines
  • Offer your product/service to help NGO at low to no fees (e.g. Check out Ikig.ai, the “for good” initiative founded by Dataiku)
  • Start a foundation and organise solidarity team-building activities for employees
  • Make donations to charities you handpicked and that are aligned with your company’s mission

Do you have other tools or sustainable providers you believe would be a nice addition to this article? Email me at eugeniecolonnadistria@gmail.com, I would be happy to hear about it :)

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