Sustainability through tech
We believe in pushing sustainability through tech. We want to be a company that breathes sustainability in several areas, in and through tech. What’s our leverage? 7%.
Transportation is a huge factor in the United Nations’ sustainability goals for 2030, with trucks and buses representing roughly 7% of the overall CO2 emissions — yearly reaching over 35 billion tons since 2012.
As a digital product studio, we at tb.lx develop software solutions for sustainable transportation. When we co-create long-lasting products with our customers, we can really make a market-wide difference to help influence the reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions.
How we can make a difference at tb.lx:
As a transportation technology company, focusing on those 7% is the right thing to do.
We decided to interview our CEO, Christian Lessing, to share our perspective on sustainability through tech:
Q: How is tb.lx contributing to the United Nations sustainability goals for 2030?
CL: We want to contribute towards more than one goal. The way we’re setting tb.lx up for the future takes into account several goals, including:
On our people and culture area:
- Goal 4: “Good health and wellbeing”
- Goal 5: “Gender equality”
- Goal 10: “Reduced inequalities”
On our technology and digital product area:
- Goal 8: “Decent work and economic growth”
- Goal 9: “Industry, innovation, and infrastructure”
- Goal 11: “Sustainable cities and communities”
- Goal 12: “Responsible consumption and production”
These goals should guide us in how we build our businesses, how we think of future cities and bring goods from A to B, and how we develop our electric and efficient vehicles.
Transversal sustainability is also about how we drive value for teams and products, and what we want to influence with the new products we’re onboarding. It’s about how we work, and how we can share our learnings with our partners in a beneficial way.
Q: Why is continuous improvement such an important aspect of sustainability?
CL: Don’t be proud of what you build to the point you don’t want to change it. If we weren’t open to continuous discovery and continuous improvement, we would be bound to become obsolete. We would be wasting money, energy and materials on something that’s not beneficial to the customer, the community or the environment. If that’s not the opposite of transversal sustainability, what is?
Q: What tools do we have to reach our long-term sustainability goal?
CL: Technology and processes are essential to reach this goal. Understanding our business, our customers, and our company is how we can have a real impact on making the world more sustainable. Through co-creation with customers, longevity of solutions, constant improvement, financial planning, IT architecture, people centricity, trust culture, starting with the customer’s pain points and changing the solution. That’s how we can build better products that leverage most daily transportation businesses in the leanest way possible.
That’s why we invest in a deep understanding of the domain.
Q: Is the tb.lx business model sustainable?
CL: The tb.lx business model is sustainable on different levels whilst aiming for continuous improvement. Our flexible hybrid working model allows for different work settings, adjusted to everyone’s needs. On the financial aspect you could even go as far as to say that it’s sustainable to have corporate backup. On the product side we’re aiming at interconnected digital solutions. We don’t just look into one area, we consider the whole customer journey and connections between products — this connectivity brings us into a holistic thinking approach that permeates sustainability into all our areas. Even in the people and culture area, we can be sustainable towards mental health, or on more practical levels when we understand that it’s not sustainable that everyone owns a passenger car and propose a transportation voucher instead of a company car, for example.
Q: Is technology the only way to reach sustainability?
CL: It’s easy to see technology as the direct route to achieve sustainability goals, but it’s worth nothing if you don’t care for your people. If you have a transversal, broad, holistic view of things, then you can build a community that’s driven by the same values, working on the same goals. And through serving that community, trust and sustainability multiply into families and society.
That’s why we invest in people that can make a difference, and spread it.
Q: How can you truly keep people in mind in the technology business?
CL: By keeping people at the center of our decisions. If our people live a healthy and happy life, that wellbeing reflects back on our products with better results — that’s circular sustainability. How we as people live in this world really contributes to what we’re doing and our general mindset, it’s contagious, and we’re able to spread it and live it — it finds a direct translation into our work and what we do.
Q: In one sentence, what’s the secret to sustainability through tech?
CL: Having a problem-solution mindset, driving value, having the right people at the right place, and caring for mental health.
If all this comes together, we’re truly putting sustainability into action.
Both technology and community play into our long-term goal — to change things for the better, transversally and holistically. Only through both are we truly driving sustainability. So let’s start with those 7%.
