Airthings Sustainability Strategy

sustainability-summit

Every year we get all Airthings employees together in one room to talk through our strategies and goals for the next year. This year, because of COVID, it was a bit different, but we still managed to get our Oslo team together (with the help of social distancing and a lot of extra space). The focus this year was sustainability, and it was our chance to test our findings from the first smaller workshops on the rest of the group. Over 70 employees were involved in searching for direct solutions to our sustainability challenges.

This participatory methodology for a self-diagnosis has been crucial to creating a holistic overview of where we want to be based on the views of the company.

Main purpose

We set specific goals to attain during the workshop.

1. Understand the lifecycle of Airthings products and set the groundwork to redesign the current linear system
2. Propose direct solutions for our sustainability challenges
3. Propose measurable and ambitious goals

During the workshop we understood that as a fast- growing company we have a responsibility towards the people and the planet, and we have seen sustainability as the step forward in our business model. Therefore, we are aiming to improve our impact not only by doing good but by being good.

We have identified that the sustainable dimensions play a central role as they are aligned with our core values:

To love the planet and its people health and well-being
To dare innovate, be curious, and make a difference in the way we do business
To focus on creating the best experiences and solutions, on our customers, processes, and quality (as shown in the pie chart 1)

Outcomes

On completion of the workshops, the Airthings team identified:

- 3 focus areas: planet, people and business ecosystem
- 11 sustainability priorities
- 53 challenges and opportunities
- 50 measurable goals (to be revisited)
- 277 proposed solutions (to be revisited)

There is still a long way to go since this is a circular process with constant feedback. Today we are working on the different Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for these goals, which we hope will help the future be more sustainable.

In the upcoming years, businesses and organizations will become aware of the importance of system thinking, meaning not only acting as an individual but acting with a holistic perspective. We vow to continue to seek the interconnectivity of everything to pursue sustainable systems in our value chain. The future will be sustainable only if we act now.