Environmental sustainability represents an existential challenge to organizations of all sizes. Corporate boards around the world are taking a deeper look at their sustainability initiatives. It’s not only the right thing to do for the environment and society, but also a good business decision. A recent Accenture study revealed that companies engaged in an intentional environmental sustainability initiative outperformed their peers by 21 percent on a profitability standpoint.
Cisco Systems is one of the organizations that recognized the need to change how they did business as well as how they can help their customers make those changes. Using the data, they can capture with their own technology Cisco partnered with other manufacturers to renovate Penn 1 in New York City. Penn 1 is one of the locations in Cisco’s Real Estate portfolio and their first “smart building”. You can check out what they did and how they did it here.
Ever looking to improve on technology and how they can incorporate environmental sustainability into these improvements, Cisco is working on ways to measure GHG emissions and energy efficiency. One of these ways according to Cisco is coming soon with the Nexus Dashboard 3.0 and Nexus Dashboard Insights 6.3 features which will have a sustainability report. The report will display device energy consumption, CO2 per site emissions, costs of energy usage, and allow customers to understand their energy sources. These quantifiable metrics are a great source for customers to report on their own sustainability goals.
Another way Cisco is helping the environment, their customers and their partners is through their Takeback program. This program provides customers an environmentally safe way to dispose of retired Cisco equipment and incentives Cisco partners to assist the customer in returning that equipment. The equipment returned to Cisco is responsibly reused and recycled to help reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of the Takeback program is the Cisco Refresh (Certified Remanufactured) program. This is Cisco’s commitment to minimizing environmental impact and helping their customers do the same. These products come with identical warranty as new products, and they are immediately eligible for services like Cisco Smartnet. Cisco Refresh also helps reduce supply chain issues through quick delivery, aggressive pricing and refresh is the only risk-free alternative to buying new. Cisco has over $200M in Refresh inventory that ships quickly.
With all of this in mind, Cisco created the Environmental Sustainability Specialization (ESS). With the Environmental sustainability Specialization, Cisco partners can differentiate themselves by offering environmentally friendly solutions, helping their customers migrate to more sustainable equipment, and driving responsible recycling of their old hardware. For Cisco partners who complete the Environmental Sustainability Specialization (ESS), this can be the first step to recognizing their efforts to help their customers and their own organization implement sustainable business practices.
To learn more about what Cisco is doing with Environmental Sustainability and how the specialization can help Cisco partners with their customer’s needs. Please join the TD SYNNEX webinar on Wednesday, September 6 at 1:00 PM EST.
