Techbuyer sets its sights on 5 stars for the UN SDGs

Transparency and measurable targets are important when it comes to sustainable business practice but so too are communication and education. At Techbuyer we recognise this, engaging not just with the market and the business world, but also with the next generation of business professionals. Evidence shows that sustainability concerns are more important amongst younger people than older generations. One in three 18-24 year olds have turned down jobs or “climate quit” because a company’s ESG commitments were not in line with their values. 

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. Supporting the Goals is a framework set up to reward public evidence of contributions to the SDGs. Businesses receive a rating based on each of the 5 key steps they should take to support the goals. 

Engaging with the SDGs requires you to identify the goals most relevant to your organisation. If you are an IT company for example: Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production fits in with your operations. Then set targets relevant to the chosen goals (such as aiming to divert 4 million kilos of technology from landfill). You will also need to publicly announce these targets and regularly report on your progress, like in our Sustainability reports. Finally, you need to take action to educate those in your supply chain on the importance and benefits of setting up SDGs for themselves. 

This can be broadly translated to a star rating metric on the Support the Goals website. One of Techbuyer’s goals for 2023 has been to attain a 5-star rating in our support of the SDGs. Achieving this is no mean feat; Techbuyer will be joining a list of only 21 companies globally that have achieved the rating so far and only the 5th technology company to have done so since the SDGs were conceived in 2019. 

The SDGs as a force for good 

Techbuyer’s involvement with the SDGs has seen us taking part in some exciting opportunities that we may not have been involved with otherwise. Our work with IT Schools Africa has helped students across the continent have access to quality technology for digital education. Climate Action Festival saw us focus more on local action; working towards net-zero for Harrogate. Our Sustainability Day at the National Museum of Computing focused on teaching 11-15 year olds about the impacts of Technology on climate change. 

There are two ways of publicly supporting and charting progress towards your targets. One is the UN Global Compact and the other is Support the Goals. The UN Global Compact (the clue is in the name) is a huge worldwide organisation that runs workshops as part of a  Making Global Goals Local Business campaign, which is how we first found out about the goals. However, when it comes to practical advice on how to run an SDG programme for smaller companies, it is not a straightforward organisation to navigate. Support the Goals, by contrast, is much more focused on SMEs and provides a website where you can celebrate your level of engagement alongside FTSE 250 companies and those from the ASX100 Australian stock exchange. 

Walking the talk on educating young people about sustainable technology 

We have a 2025 target to contribute 5,000 hours to educate young people about sustainable technology. This being the case, it made sense to partner young people in promotion of the goals and also build it into work placements for university students. To this end, we put together a brief on supplier engagement for a final-year project for students from York School of Business and Society. Members of our team spent 21 hours with the students giving them practical insights as well as working on the project.  

A big part of this was giving them a tour of Techbuyer’s Harrogate facilities. The tour covered a full walkthrough of our warehouse operations: everything from repairs to e-waste and server testing. We wanted the students to get a real understanding of not just the scale of our operations, but the scale of the challenges we face, with the 57.4 million tonnes of e-waste generated globally in 2021 set to increase by another 2 million tonnes by the end of 2023. It was a great chance for the students to see circular economy in action and how it relates to a sustainable IT solutions company. When touring the warehouse, the majority of the students’ questions revolved around how each department leant itself to our sustainable business model. 

“Every single department and area of each function adheres to the principles of sustainability, which was very refreshing to see in action, and it underlined to us that taking actions on sustainability is very achievable within businesses.” 

Student creative output 

The aim of this project was to develop and implement a supply-chain engagement programme, with which to understand the current progress of our suppliers towards the SDGs, develop an education package for suppliers, plan the engagement with the suppliers, launch and deliver and, finally, evaluate the outcomes of the engagement.  

The student team began by auditing our supply chain for companies that would benefit most from engaging with the goals and they opted to create an interactive webinar with polls for as much engagement as possible, with our support. We agreed with them this should be recorded and watched later for any parties who were unable to attend and also as an ongoing education piece for the market. 

Some of the huge benefits we got from working with students were the fresh set of perspectives and innovative content they developed. With the colourful Supporting the Goals branding, they made a series of LinkedIn posts to advertise the webinar, an Instagram video that was created during the warehouse tour and drafted some invite emails to be sent to the suppliers. 

The webinar itself was not only an informative look at the SDG model as a whole, but also an exploration of Techbuyer’s experience since joining the scheme in 2019, how we chose our targets and what progress we are making towards them. In front of a selection of our suppliers from different sectors, the students comprehensively explained both how and why organisations should get invested in the goals. It had benefits for their education as well as the education of suppliers, as this comment from them showed.  

“During the process of performing the webinar, we valued being able to work with the expertise of Techbuyer employees, exploring the real-life implications of the global goals” 

The University partnership not only gave us access to a new generation of talent, but also a window into how prospective business leaders in the future are being developed with sustainability in mind. The students (2 of whom were international) were all aware of the SDGs and mentioned that many had them in their curriculum. It poses the question, if you are not a sustainable company, how attractive are you as employers to an environmentally focused generation? 

Watch the webinar here