THE brightly lit lobby that hosts a few tables, chairs, LED screens and a casual café is roughly just 1,500 square meters in size, but it is actually more powerful than it looks. This recently launched Sustainability Hub of Accenture Philippines acts as the one-stop shop for the company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) actions. This is where partners are usually given an update on their green initiatives. Perhaps more importantly, this is where it virtually gathers thousands of its employees spread all over the Philippines to encourage them to support the environment. To date, about 26,000 Eco-Champions have risen to the challenge, making activities like tree planting and beach cleanups as part of their social corporate responsibility roles, if not their lifestyles.
Prince Balantac helping in the Dolomite Beach Cleanup. PHOTO BY PRINCE BALANTAC
During the launch, Accenture Philippines’ statement acknowledged that “sustainability is an important force of change.” Embedding it “in everything it does and everyone it works with” leads to the creation of “both business value and sustainable impact, enabled by technology and human ingenuity.”
The central digital mind that acts as coordinator and possibly a transmitter of information is the Hub’s Workplace Intelligent Network (WIN), which has been in place since 2018. It monitors activities of possible wastage that have to be reduced, like real-time electricity uptimes and water leaks in all of their facilities in all of the locations. Another thing WIN monitors is the carbon emissions the offices give out, their impact and how they can be minimized.
WIN also builds a bridge to get their employees into the sustainability program. As Amabel Gatmaitan, Accenture’s corporate services and sustainability lead in the Philippines, puts it, “People can really see how we do sustainability for our clients, for ourselves, for the community.”
Eco-Champion Prince Balantac in the Yangil Reforestation. PHOTO BY PRINCE BALANTAC
A free module called Sustainability Quotient teaches employees the meaning of sustainability, ESG components and doable, practical, but significant micro-actions that they can employ.
An example is the Laptops for You program, which lets employees take care of their laptops and then keep them at the end of the device’s natural life for a “very, very minimal fee.” In contrast, most companies dispose of laptops as soon as they depreciate. Another successful initiative is the total elimination of single-use plastics.
Eco-Champions
Then there are the volunteer programs consisting of tree planting, crop growing, coastal cleanups, recycling and energy-saving competitions, and awareness campaigns for communities in places the company has “adopted” like Manila, Taguig and Zambales. Sometimes, these activities form the core of the regular team-building sessions. Over 14 years, these volunteers grew from an initial 100 to the current 26,000 Eco-Champions.
Prince Balantac, Workplace service delivery manager, says that his 4-year-old child is the main driver that inspires him to join these activities: “I want to do everything I can to help secure a healthy future for him by protecting and preserving the environment. It’s truly a win-win: we attract, engage and retain talented people, contribute to a healthier planet and help the company operate responsibly while setting a powerful example for others to follow.”
Accenture Eco-Champions celebrate the launch of the Sustainability Hub. PHOTO FROM ACCENTURE PHILIPPINES
Accenture gives its Eco-Champions an option to continue these sustainability initiatives even outside the office’s walls. The app Eco Digit enables employees to declare their environmentally friendly activities at home and at work.
Regarding institutional partners, Accenture Philippines collaborated with a client to create the carbon footprint risk calculator using generative artificial intelligence leveraging ChatGPT. This tool assists engineers in designing optimal energy efficiency programs, such as appliance-specific discounts to promote lower energy consumption. While scope 2 and 3 forecasting takes weeks for engineers, this tool reduces calculations to minutes.
Accenture also helped an Australian multinational energy company establish the platform for ESG measurement and reporting in support of their road map to decarbonize the business. The solution, built on Salesforce NetZero Cloud, collects data inputs across various systems for scope 1 and 2, climate action and audit dashboards, and scope 3, emissions for generated waste and procurement. This accelerated their path to NetZero and increased visibility into emissions across all scopes to help drive data-driven sustainability and operation decisions to achieve the plan to be climate-positive by 2040.
Gatmaitan says their continuing collaboration with Eco-Champions and ecosystem partners will “develop innovative solutions to address pressing climate change and sustainability challenges, as highlighted in our very own Sustainability Hub in Manila.”
