(Intervista sugli obbiettivi di raggiungimento del net zero)
Mondora, founded in 2002, is a software and advisory company specialized in customized cloud solutions for all kind of businesses (B Lab, 2021i). It supports customers with the design, implementation, and operation of various IT architectures and the associated teams and governance structures, with a strong focus on the implementation and management of technological paradigms (ivi). Categorized under Service with Minor Environmental Footprint sector and under the 10-49 dimension, the firm signs a BIA score of 122,8 points, largely driven by Community Impact Area with 47,8 points. By supporting other firms with consulting services and helping them to develop a sustainable and effective business management, Mondora unlocks the SBM 8 for developing scale-up sustainable solutions. Several corporate projects sustain the environment, while the associated Impact Area records a 17,1 score in the latest BIA, unlocking two IBMs such Environment Products & Services Introduction and Environmental Education & Information (B Lab, 2021i).
Mondora shows the B Corp certification since 2015 and successively it has also become a Benefit Corporation. The working history of the company changed in 2020: due to the pandemic, Mondora closed its office in Berbenno in Valtellina and converted its working modality to full remote working (Mondora, 2021). Consequently, as Mr. Bergese (Mondora’s Benefit Officer) suggested, the company is also adapting its strategy and planning process towards carbon neutrality to the new, diffused network of peers that mainly work from their homes. Mondora’s business is essentially based on cloud architectures, for which third-parties supply servers and components to the firm. Thus, the immaterial nature of the business and the absence of offices allowed Mondora to reset several categories of emissions, but they also introduced other sources of gases. As its Benefit Officer suggested, 2030 is still far for Mondora but its people are understanding how to bridge gaps. In line with the general strategy to achieve carbon neutrality developed along the previous chapters, Mr. Bergese agree that the first step to formulate a net-zero strategy for Mondora entails the measure of gas emissions referrable to the working sphere of employees’ lives. Even if the reformulation of the net-zero strategy will consider a complex network of peers, the company is already taking environmental actions with direct and indirect effects on emissions.
In terms of transports, its workers continue to afford business transfers to clients but with a different policy than pre-pandemic periods: after closing of the office, business transfers have not registered anymore expenses charged to the customer. Thus, the new policy disincentivizes business transfers to clients by charging relative expenses to Mondora, favouring the application of solutions and the development of works through remote working modality. Then, in front of transports, Mr. Bergese suggested that the “No flight zone policy” of travel disincentive is going to be kept on track along the successive periods. Another solution developed by the firm is Cycle2Work, a web app that rewards employees for going to work by bike or on foot, whilst safeguarding the environment (Mondora, 2021). For every kilometre travelled in a sustainable way, the app calculates how many CO2 emissions are saved and Mondora will provide a reward of € 0.20/km (ivi). The goal is the spread of the Cycle2Work among companies, providing it either in exchange of CO2 emissions saved by their employees (in order to sum them with Mondora’s savings), or by paying for taking rights on their savings and utilizing them for virtuous scopes (ivi). As the last Impact Report (2021) introduces, Mondora saved 30.16 kg of CO2 in front of 131.71 km in 2020, until closing the office. Therefore, Cycle2Work is now registering lower possibilities of internal applications than pre-pandemic periods because travels from employees’ houses to offices have been essentially deleted.
In terms of services, the firm operates by exploiting third-party systems which register emissions in front of their owners. As the Benefit Officer suggested, Mondora takes into consideration this contingency by advising to clients the utilization of big providers that are also approaching net zero targets or similar environmental purposes in their businesses. After an analysis of the impact of own technological infrastructures, Mondora defined the guidelines for the choice of servers to utilize by choosing two suppliers which have a plan to reduce their carbon footprints and show the best choice for provisions of low-impact servers: Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure (Mondora, 2021). On the other, personal computers utilized by workers are involved in an impact-driven project that cares about emission embedded into them. Until 2019, Mondora operated with personal computers through a two-year leasing agreement, without caring about the phases of product lifecycle after their collection by the supplier (Mondora, 2021).
To responsibly use them, Mondora decided to buy computers for working purposes and to donate them to no-profit organizations after a few years, thus avoiding waste and preserve working products (ivi).
In terms of electric energy, Mr. Bergese introduced a future project that Mondora is taking into consideration, linked to the current way of work that leverages employees’ houses and household utilities. By providing incentives, employees would be allowed to deliberately choose to subscribe agreements of renewable energy supply that would power electric systems of their houses for both professional and personal purposes.
In the past years, people of Mondora assumed several environment-beneficial behaviours in the office, such as: waste reduction, through a system capable to measure the amount of waste produced in the office, consequently setting reduction targets and cooperating among peers to reach them; plastic free, through the purchase of reusable water bottles for each employee; paper free, thus avoiding use of paper and also influencing clients to limit their related uses (Mondora, 2021). In line with Cycle2Work, Mondora launched other two projects suggesting environmental benefits, such: Hire a Farmer, by which the company hires a farmer to work the land and grow organic produce for every twenty employees assumed, and HireBitto, for which it sustains farmers and cheesemakers that choose to work with traditional methods and without the use of chemicals or industrial machineries (ivi).
In front of the pursuit of carbon neutrality by 2030, Mr. Bergese declares about Mondora’s people that: “Today we want to do the world of tomorrow, without borrowing from tomorrow but working now for tomorrow”. Then, according to his words, a de facto commitment to carbon neutrality was already done by the firm, prior to the call and as a natural step.
(taken from Marco Bugnano Thesis)