Tech4Climate: why Glovo is joining forces in the fight against climate change
When we created Glovo four and bit years ago, all countries were meeting at COP21 to vote the Paris Agreement, by which they were committing to limit global warming to well below two degrees celsius. The last few years have been the warmest ever recorded, and we have been counting various extreme meteorological events, the latest of which, hurricane Dorian, has just devastated the Bahamas Islands.
Since the beginning of the industrial era, our production and consumption systems have derived from the linear economy model. We have been accustomed to extract — produce — consume and throw away our goods and materials. This economic model is particularly intensive in greenhouse gases emissions, as carbon dioxide is constantly being discharged into the atmosphere.
Given the high level of greenhouse gas emissions, and the rapid rate of increase in global temperature, it’s time for non-State actors to play their part, in particular businesses, whose economic activities are primarily responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
Due to our position as a platform that connects producers to consumers, we’re in a unique position to collaborate with our partners along the value chain to collectively step-up our sustainability efforts. While we are new at this, we’re convinced that it is the right direction to take.
The world is changing and we believe that digitalization can support an accelerated transition towards a low-carbon economy. In some sectors, like water and energy, smart technologies already allow us to manage the availability of resources at the local level. In others, like transportation of persons or freight, geolocalization is used to optimize routes and supply chains, thus reducing idle time and fuel burn. In some instances, due to real-time monitoring of the conditions of goods, some brands can now replace or refill their products at the appropriate time and plan in advance their end-of-life.
In these examples, the digital economy is helping society laying the foundation for a more circular economy, characterized by the extension of a products lifecycle, the cascading re-utilization of materials, and the regeneration of waste into new resources through recycling.
We must take responsibility and play our part in containing the climate emergency, and we believe this is the only way to grow sustainably. Moreover, our partners and users are counting on us to lead the way. As a start-up, we have no excuses since sustainability can be built into our DNA from early stages. By joining the Science-Based Targets initiative, we are committing to identify potential greenhouse gases mitigation levers together with some of our most committed partners along Glovo’s value chain. In the coming months, we aim at aligning the growth of our business with a 1.5 degree celsius global warming trajectory, as recommended by the international scientific community. To do so, we are exploring several programs including: optimization of logistics for delivery, sustainably-sourced and circular packaging and content selection, organization and hierarchisation. We also aim at using Glovo as a communication channel to encourage users to adopt more sustainable behaviours with regards to the environment. For instance, we started carrying out some experiments in this field, most notably in Valencia, Spain, where our couriers are collecting waste delivery bags and dropping them at a specific sorting point.
As an interface between retail businesses, couriers and consumers, we will need to work with everyone. We will look to governments for long-term, clear policies on climate change that give us the clarity and confidence to invest in the technologies and markets for a zero-carbon future. From our side, we are willing to contribute to local experiments with our different types of partners to accelerate the design of these bold climate policies, for instance in the fields of circularity of goods, services and packaging as well as smart mobility.
With various companies in the world including Salesforce, Mozilla, Etsy, Patagonia or Atlassia, we are joining the Global Climate Strike movement by encouraging our team to join climate demonstrations in all cities where we operate. We are convinced that the environmental awareness of each and every one of us will be key to trigger a real change.
