IFS is delighted to announce the winners of its inaugural IFS Change for Good Sustainability Awards, designed to recognize sustainability excellence across its community of customers. The awards are designed to highlight the excellent work carried out every day by IFS customers and partners to make their own businesses more sustainable and empower their customers to do the same.
The 36 nominations from across the globe were reviewed by an expert judging panel that included Lewis Pugh, the United Nations Patron of the Oceans and IFS’s new Sustainability Ambassador; Jacqueline de Rojas, President at techUK, business advisor and advocate for diversity and inclusion; and Michelle Lancaster, Director, Sustainability at Microsoft. They were split into five categories.
Rolls Royce UK won the Best use of IFS technology in a sustainability initiative award. IFS plays a vital role in realizing Rolls-Royce’s ‘Intelligent Engine’ vision, the Blue Data Thread enabled by the partnership between Rolls-Royce and IFS provides the data connectivity between airline and Rolls-Royce that allows the business to dramatically improve the time between engine overhauls.
To get a sense of the sustainability impact, around 50% of these overhauls require the business to transport the engine via a chartered Boeing 747, which burns around 10 tonnes of fuel an hour. With a flight to and from the overhaul base, 200 overhaul shop visits would generate 30,000 tonnes of CO2. Through the Blue Data Thread Rolls Royce is able to avoid these overhauls and emissions by demonstrating the engine is safe to remain on wing for up to 45% longer.
The highly commended entry in this category was Urban Remedy, US, an organic food company that embodies the belief that ‘Food is Healing’. By blending ancient medicinal principals with modern culinary innovation, Urban Remedy offers the cleanest naturally functional food. All its ready-to-eat meals, snacks and juices are certified organic, certified non-GMO, gluten-free and low-glycemic.
Using IFS Applications 10 has helped Urban Remedy to reduce its waste. As it doesn’t use preservatives, there is a lot of expense on fresh ingredients, with a threat of high wastage.. IFS had a dramatic impact on the company, providing it with better control over its supply chain. There was a 3-4% reduction in waste on finished goods that were being sold rather than purged, as well as a total 25% reduction in waste on prepared meals. In the manufacturing process, it has reduced raw materials waste by 25%.
The second category, ‘Most innovative solution for sustainability’ was won by Eco Spindles, a Sri Lanka-based pioneer in manufacturing recycled, top-quality monofilaments for cleaning tools, and yarn for fabric manufacturers worldwide. Galvanized by its vision of maintaining environmental standards whilst addressing consumer expectations, its research and development is focused on delivering the highest quality recycled products, and conduct via sustainable technologies.
The Eco Spindles synthetic yarn production facility, where yarn is produced exclusively from recycled PET flakes, is the only one of its kind in Sri Lanka. Eco Spindles also has a dope dying capability (where colour pigments are inserted as part of the extrusion process) which helps bypass the need to discharge coloured waste water. In addition, the company has developed Sri Lanka’s most effective plastic waste collection mechanism, creating thousands of livelihoods for local communities.
The highly commended category for this award was shared between Australian company, Geofabrics, and Sweden’s Derome. Geofabrics’ vision is to be the Australian leader in providing sustainable solutions for a better world. Geofabrics has collaborated with suppliers of Australian recycled PET plastics (plastic bottles), and use this recycled PET raw material to manufacture its high-tech geotextiles. bidim Green is unique as it is the only geotextile in Australia produced with recycled Australian plastics, ultimately addressing the increasing call for greater sustainability in the Australian construction and infrastructure industry.
Geofabrics uses IFS as its Enterprise Resource Planning software across almost every aspect of the organisation. The IFS data driven dashboards gives the business the ability to quantify the bottles saved from landfill and waterways and during 2020 this figure was over 11 million. Based on current usage estimates, the production of bidim Green will remove around 1,700 tonnes of CO2 annually and more than 1,000 tons of plastic.
Based in Sweden, The Derome Group processes by-products from the forest and sawmills into biofuel and new energy. It is a major producer of biofuel and provides housing and businesses with bio-energy. Derome builds low-energy walls and passive houses to reduce energy consumption, and supply heating systems based on renewable energy sources. It works to ensure the products it manufactures or sells and the material they are made of, are possible to reuse, recycle or finally be disposed of with the least possible use of resources and without causing harm to the environment.
The winner of the Journey of transformation to a sustainable business award was Dutch heating and ventilation business, Climate for Life. With a mission to create more comfortable, healthy and energy-efficient indoor climates, Climate for Life is on a journey to actively contribute to reducing its customers’ CO2 through its technology, and or its own business by working towards energy-neutral production. This includes the installation of 3,700 solar panels on the roof of its production location in Tiel, which will allow for almost all energy consumption to be self-generated. The business has committed to only develop new products and services that fit the ‘Climate for Life’ ethos, whether for new builds or the renovation market.
US provider of clean fuel solutions Hexagon Agility was highly commended for this award. The company has a goal to ‘make a difference to the world by delivering the best performing, most effective clean transportation solutions’. Hexagon Agility is making clean fuels the logical choice for commercial vehicles, offering reduced costs in addition to their more obvious environmentally-friendly benefits.
Organic cereal and granola bar producer, Nature’s Path won the Social Impact award. Path, are pioneers in sustainable manufacturing and operations tackling critical sustainability issues in its industry. The business recently outlined a new sustainability goal for all packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025 which included being the first organic food company to partner with global reusable packaging programme, Loop, in May this year. The project with Loop involved launching its first granola in a reusable container.
Giving back is also an important part of the business which runs an annual Gardens for Good grant programme encouraging others to provide accessible, healthy, organic food to their communities, which are often in low-income urban areas or food deserts where people struggle to find affordable, nutritious food. Each year, it awards three $15,000 grants to deserving non-profits with organic garden projects in Canada and the United States.
US company, Associa was highly commended in this category. As North America’s leading community management company, Associa has a duty to support vibrant communities. To achieve this goal, Associa has put in place numerous social impact programmes. Its flagship programme is its charitable affiliate Associa Cares, which supports families and communities in crisis and seeks to assist residents in need because of natural or man-made disasters.
Since its founding in 2007, Associa Cares has aided more than 3,000 individuals, numerous organizations and has distributed more than $4 million dollars. During 2020, Associa Cares provided approximately $200,000 in relief to 148 families as well as providing more than $125,000 in community-based grants to help those most impacted by the ongoing pandemic.
In the Individual Contribution category, the winner was Wrightbus and its owner, Jo Bamford. Based in Northern Ireland, Wrightbus is leading the zero-emission bus movement. The company has contributed a tremendous amount of technology and innovative products to help grow and improve the global transportation industry. In early October 2019, Wrightbus moved into administration after a fall in orders due to a general fall in the market for new buses, among other issues.
The company was saved by Bamford. Since taking over the reins, he has transformed it into one of the world’s most prominent bus manufacturers. In 2020, Wrightbus, under Jo Bamford’s new ownership, launched the world’s first Double Deck Hydrogen bus – The StreetDeck Hydroliner – an economical, safe, and environmentally friendly vehicle that will revolutionize the industry and usher the world into a new era of transportation.
The highly commended entry was Löfbergs, the Swedish coffee group and its Chief Innovation and Circular Transformation Officer Lars Aaen Thøgersen. Löfbergs is one of the largest family-owned coffee roasters in the Nordic region. As a company that produces roughly 10 million cups of coffee daily, Löfbergs have set out goals to reduce any waste in the value chain, ultimately aiming for zero waste by 2030. In his role, Thøgersen develops and promotes sustainability initiatives, such as the Circular Coffee Community, where Löfbergs has invited consumers, companies and others to contribute towards a circular coffee business, with zero waste.
Celebration of success
Congratulations are in order to all the winning and commended entries and to everyone who participated.
