Capgemini Taking Steps to Contribute to a More Positive Planet

At Capgemini, we are proud to be taking strong steps to contribute to a Positive Planet. Our environmental sustainability strategy is all about reducing our own environmental impacts against ambitious targets, building business resilience against climate change and supporting our clients with their sustainability challenges. We are committed to cutting our carbon emissions and were one of the first companies in our sector to have our carbon reduction target validated by the Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi). Our headline target is to reduce our carbon footprint by 20% per employee by 2020 and 30% by 2030.

Between 2015, when we first established our targets and set our baseline, and the end of 2018, we made strong progress. We have reduced our overall carbon emissions per employee by 18.5%. In fact, our performance has contributed to the global Group accomplishing its 2020 sustainability goal 2 years ahead of schedule.

Our carbon footprint in North America is driven primarily by emissions from business travel, which comprises eighty percent or our overall emissions. To tackle this challenge, we focused on partnering with our business leaders to reduce the amount of traveling necessary to perform the work we do for our clients. Our business has changed in numerous ways over the last few years. Strong revenue growth in North America has enabled us to grow our workforce, while also investing in virtual collaboration technologies and great facilities that enable our workforce to excel at working virtually. Our focus on customer-centricity has led to the establishment of large, locally based accounts. And last but not least, our finance leaders have driven a focus on cost sensitivity and higher margins. This work has enabled us to reduce our emissions from business travel by over 15% per employee since 2015. Meeting our goals requires us to practice discipline and further reduce our non-billable travel. We must also look to the future and work to position ourselves as true champions of digital by focusing on effectively delivering projects with a distributed, remote project team.

In addition to business travel, we have reduced our energy consumption per employee in our offices by 16.5%, despite continuing expansion into further sites and markets. It’s taken a great amount of effort by our site administrators and Corporate Real Estate leaders, as well as all our employees, to establish and maintain our ISO 14001-certified Environmental Management system, which has been a key tool in improving our energy efficiency and waste management processes. We established environmental criteria for the selection of new facilities, and work with our landlords to make sure we receive the highest possible value from our leases. We implemented lighting schedules and automatic on-off switches for our lights wherever possible and post switch-off messaging everywhere else.

Finally, over the past two years, we’ve been making a concerted effort to engage with our employees on sustainability. We launched our Positive Planet program and began a quarterly webinar series to spread the message about our accomplishments, challenges, and other topics related to business, technology, and the environment. We also hosted the first ever Green Futures Hackathon, in partnership with our Millennial Innovation Council (MIC) and Community Action, Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability (CARES) Employee Resources Groups. In the coming years, we’ll continue to engage more of our employee in our efforts and leverage their passion for sustainability help meet our goals.

We as a company continue to strive for creating a more positive planet for ourselves and the clients and communities we serve.