We’re starting off 2022 with Aucto Going Green at GreenBiz 22

Last week, Jamil Rahman and I had the pleasure of attending the GreenBiz 22 Conference in Scottsdale, AZ for 3 days.  Our first thought were how nice it was to be back at an in-person event again and be able to meet our customers and prospects face to face.  For the last almost two years, we’ve conducted our entire business virtually and although it’s been business as usual for us, we’ve realized for a lot of our customers, face-to-face interactions are such a key part of our partnership.  We are definitely looking forward to being able to slowly start that again, keeping the health and safety of our team and customers as a top priority, of course! 

Overall, the conference was a great way for us to continually top up our knowledge on sustainability, which has been at the forefront of many global organizations’ discussions.  But I also left the conference feeling energized and excited from all the conversations we’ve had with top Chief Sustainability Officers and their team from Fortune 500 companies. There was so much opportunity to explore and when we took the teams through (at a high level) how they could be looking at sustainability and green initiatives a bit differently, the enthusiasm was universal across the board. 

Here are a few key takeaways from the conference:

Sustainability is a growing focus in many organizations.  There is often a dedicated team and budget to execute green initiatives.  However, there is no real standardization in how to measure the success of these programs. 

Many of the organizations we spoke to had teams that were responsible for helping take the charge on going green.  Some were even able to speak to several initiatives and how they would in theory be able to help make them a greener organization. However, when the topic of reporting was brought up and we asked how they would be able to measure the success of these initiatives, it became evident that this was a challenge for the organization.  The initiatives sounded great qualitatively but many were missing the ability to quantify the impacts these initiatives were having or being able to access reporting that could provide the data to back their claims. 

Organizations offering carbon credits have been on the rise but the credits are not all created equal.  There is also a growing demand for carbon credits and prices will continue to increase due to low supply. 

We’ve spoken with a few customers who have explored different options on how to purchase carbon credits to offset the levels they’re currently emitting.  The challenge they’re facing is having a consistent way to determine if what they were purchasing was meaningful enough to really help them make an impact. Furthermore, not many organizations have succeeded in being able to drastically reduce their emission levels so there is still a high need for the credits. When supply is low and demand is high, it becomes the perfect storm for rising prices. 

There is a huge opportunity in leveraging the disposition of surplus assets (every organization has these) to contribute to sustainability goals that can be tangible and measurable.

The one common element we realized in our ongoing conversations with these Fortune 500 companies were, very few have explored or even realize that there was an opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint with the surplus equipment and machinery they have within their facilities.  By simply redeploying surplus or idle assets from one facility to another that may have a use for it or reselling the asset to motivated buyers representing other organizations on the second market, these enterprises could maximize asset value and recovery, prolong the lifecycle of the asset and ultimately reduce waste by avoiding sending these assets to landfills.

When we explained this concept to our enterprise clients, many were eager to find out how they could make this work for their organizations. And even though these initiatives wouldn’t be led by the Sustainability teams and would fall more on Supply Chain, Procurement, Project Management, or even Finance teams, there was a huge benefit in helping reach sustainability goals with these strategies.

Looking Ahead

I am grateful for the time we got to spend with our prospects and customers at the event. We learned so much but were also given the opportunity to educate the industry on how asset recovery could truly drive sustainability goals.

We’ve got a few exciting announcements coming down the pipeline in terms of product development related to Sustainability and can’t wait to share it with our network soon and help reduce waste by providing a sustainable solution for surplus assets. 

If you’d like to speak with us to learn more about how we can help your organization reach sustainability goals through asset recovery, let us know by booking a quick chat with one of our Asset Recovery experts.  We’d love to hear from you!