Urte Karklienė: Balancing Digital Growth with Sustainability
As digital technology transforms industries, sustainability managers face increasingly complex responsibilities. Urte Karklienė, sustainability manager at Oxylabs.io, offers critical insights into how digital companies can navigate the intersection of technology and sustainability. Through her experience, Urte highlights the importance of innovation, education, and climate action in shaping a sustainable future for the digital industry.
The Dual-Edged Sword of Digitalization
The digital revolution has redefined business operations, bringing efficiency and connectivity. However, Urte highlights a crucial but often-overlooked aspect: the environmental cost of digitalization. “By 2030, digital technologies are predicted to contribute around 10% of global CO2 emissions, surpassing even the aviation industry. While digital solutions can reduce emissions, such as through virtual meetings, they also generate significant emissions, especially from data storage and server cooling. This highlights the dual-edged nature of technology in sustainability—both a solution and a challenge,” she notes.
Digitalization offers significant opportunities for enhancing sustainability, as it enables unprecedented efficiency and connectivity. While virtual meetings help reduce travel emissions, it's important to also focus on optimizing the infrastructure supporting digital activities, such as data centers and cloud computing. According to a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers and data transmission networks each accounted for about 1% of global electricity use in 2020. With energy demand in these sectors expected to grow by 3-4% annually through 2030, there is a tremendous opportunity for innovation in energy-efficient technologies and the adoption of renewable energy sources. Urte encourages sustainability managers to embrace digitalization by advocating for energy-efficient data centers, promoting renewable energy in digital infrastructure, and encouraging responsible digital consumption. This approach aligns digital growth with sustainability goals, ensuring that technological advancements contribute positively to environmental objectives.
For sustainability managers, the task is to balance digital innovation with its environmental implications. Urte’s insights underscore the need for proactive strategies that address the broader impact of digital technologies while leveraging their potential to achieve sustainability goals.
The Importance of Understanding Your Organization
One of the most significant challenges in sustainability is change management, especially when trying to implement new initiatives within an established corporate structure. Sustainability efforts often face resistance when they are perceived as external impositions rather than integral parts of the company’s core values. Studies have shown that initiatives are far more likely to succeed when they are deeply embedded in an organization’s culture and practices. This is where a deep understanding of the organization becomes crucial, as it allows sustainability managers to tailor their strategies in ways that resonate with both employees and leadership.
Urte emphasizes this point, stating, “For sustainability managers, it’s not just about having sustainability knowledge; it’s crucial to understand your company deeply—knowing the people, the business, and internal processes. This understanding enables you to effectively drive change, as you can better align sustainability initiatives with the company’s culture and operational realities, ensuring that these initiatives are not only adopted but also sustainable in the long term.”
By focusing on the human and operational aspects of the business, Urte underscores the importance of alignment between sustainability goals and business objectives. This alignment not only helps in reducing resistance but also creates opportunities to demonstrate the tangible benefits of sustainability, such as cost savings, improved brand reputation, and access to new markets. When sustainability initiatives are presented in a way that highlights their value to the business, it becomes easier to gain buy-in from decision-makers and ensure that these initiatives are integrated into the company’s long-term strategy.
Urte’s approach also involves building strong relationships within the company. This relational foundation allows sustainability managers to introduce concepts gradually, making it easier to foster a culture where sustainability becomes part of the organization’s fabric. By understanding who the key stakeholders are and how decisions are made, sustainability managers can position their initiatives as natural extensions of the company’s existing priorities, rather than as burdensome add-ons. This deep integration ensures that sustainability efforts are not only implemented but are also sustained over time, creating lasting change within the organization.
Leveraging Innovation, Education, and Climate Action
Oxylabs’ sustainability strategy centers on three pillars: innovation, education, and climate action. “In our company, we focus on three main pillars: innovation, education, and climate action. Innovation involves developing ethical technologies that can help solve environmental issues. Education includes not just internal employee training but also educating the broader digital society and supporting pro bono services for NGOs. Climate action involves initiatives beyond our direct emissions, such as supporting nature restoration and biodiversity,” she explains.
Urte’s focus on innovation is particularly relevant in the digital sector, where rapid advancements can be both a blessing and a curse. Innovation in sustainability involves not only creating new products but also rethinking existing processes to minimize environmental impact. Oxylabs.io’s commitment to ethical technology and big data solutions exemplifies how innovation can address environmental challenges, supporting NGOs and environmentalists in their efforts to monitor and protect the planet.
Education is another crucial component. Urte’s approach extends beyond internal training to educating the broader digital society. This comprehensive strategy enhances Oxylabs.io’s sustainability performance while contributing to a more informed and responsible digital ecosystem.
Lastly, climate action goes beyond Oxylabs.io’s relatively low direct emissions. Urte emphasizes the importance of contributing to broader environmental efforts, such as nature restoration and biodiversity protection. This proactive stance reflects a broader understanding of corporate responsibility, recognizing that companies play a critical role in addressing global environmental challenges.
Urte’s approach serves as a reminder that sustainability is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor but a complex, multi-faceted journey requiring ongoing commitment and adaptation.
Conclusion
Urte Karklienė’s insights offer a comprehensive guide for sustainability managers navigating the digital landscape. Her focus on balancing digitalization’s benefits and drawbacks, understanding organizational dynamics, and leveraging innovation, education, and climate action provides a robust framework for meaningful sustainability impact.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of any company.
