Better business with sustainability – Are you doing it right? 

Forbes named sustainability as one of its 10 biggest business trends for 2024, stating that “consumers increasingly prefer companies with a solid commitment to reducing their environmental footprint. On the other hand, as the green economy grows, we’re learning that green solutions often lead to bottom-line growth.” Time to review both your vendors and your processes. 

90% of today’s business leaders have sustainability high on their agenda, recognizing that their organizations have a responsibility to contribute toward a sustainable future. But only 60% of companies actually have a sustainability strategy (Forbes).  

What about your company? 

Are you looking to develop your sustainability strategy? Good! We recommend you start with reviewing your vendors and processes and identifying opportunities to relieve your environmental impact. 

Digital experiences as sustainable marketing and communication solutions  

In 2024, marketing and corporate communications are great areas to look for both quick and long-term sustainability wins. Meetings, training sessions, town halls, marketing events, conferences, and webinars are all processes that, held virtually, offer several environmental benefits, including reduced travel (an event attendee can produce as much as 2,000 pounds of CO2 on travel), material waste, energy usage (66 times less greenhouse gas emissions than physical events), and food waste (at least 15% of food at physical events ends up in the trash). 

Digital experience solutions will help you reduce your carbon footprint 

Transportation and facilities management represent two of the largest energy consumers, making them the largest contributors to an enterprise’s carbon footprint. The GHG Protocol, used by more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies today provides a set of standards, guidance, and tools for organizations to measure their carbon emissions. This protocol teaches us that the carbon footprint from attending in-person events can be substantial. 

Adopting video communication and collaboration solutions like Kaltura reduces the need for in-person events like all-hands meetings, training programs, etc. directly reducing the need for long-distance travel as well as routine local commutes. These solutions also facilitate and promote productivity in remote workplaces.  

The same is true for events such as in-person conferences that require attendees to travel.  Recent research suggests that the combined annual environmental footprint of in-person events worldwide equals the yearly GHG emissions of the USA, reaching 10% of global CO2 emissions.  

The University of Michigan estimates that a large international conference hosting 5,000 attendees would generate 7.2K tons of CO2 from travel and a further 524 tons from venue, hotel, and energy use if it were held in person. That same conference would generate 124.4 tons of CO2 if it were held virtually. That is a whopping 98% reduction of CO2 emissions and the equivalent of 158 US households annual emissions! 

It needs to be said that, though digital experiences have a significantly lower carbon footprint than in-person experiences, going virtual is not a zero-emission solution. MIT students calculated that one hour of video streaming or virtual meeting emits between 150 and 1,000 grams of carbon dioxide. A 2021 research article in the Journal of Environmental Studies found that a one-day virtual conference with 200 attendees emitted 1,324 kg of CO2 (64% of which was generated by network data transfer). This emission can however be lowered by taking additional green-conscious decisions. For instance, attendees can reduce their carbon footprint in a virtual meeting by 96% if they turn their camera off. 

As we mentioned before, though, it’s not just about making your own processes more sustainable. You can give your sustainability strategy an added boost by adopting solutions from and partnering with environmentally conscious vendors. Sustainability is transferable.  

And this is where Kaltura comes in as a leading communication and collaboration solution provider. Kaltura’s mission is to power any video experience, for any organization, regardless of size. Our product suite focuses on video collaboration and communication, including real-time communications such as webinars, virtual events, customer meetings, and town hall broadcasts, as well as creating and publishing engaging on-demand videos with Kaltura Video Portal and built-in video tools. 

Kaltura’s remote collaboration products improve sustainability and are carbon-reducing themselves. Kaltura provides solutions that drive internal and external engagements, including recruitment & onboarding, learning and training, marketing events and conferences, and much more – all done remotely, thus reducing the need to travel or commute to the office. 

Another way we, at Kaltura, offset the carbon emissions of our own virtual events is through our partnership with dots.eco. Registrants at our annual flagship events Virtually Live!, Kaltura Connect, etc. are offered a choice at registration among 6 environmental causes (planting trees, securing wildlife habitat, saving sea turtle hatchlings, cleaning ocean plastic, protecting marine areas, offsetting CO2, and restoring coral reef fragments). Each registrant individually chooses their preferred cause to which Kaltura will contribute in their name. 

You too could minimize the carbon footprint of your marketing projects and corporate communication processes by going virtual and then offset the remaining carbon emissions through similar partnerships. 

Make sure your and your vendors’ processes run on sustainable cloud environments 

Of course, your commitment to sustainability should also extend to your technical operations. Make sure your solutions, workflows, and business run on sustainable cloud environments. And, as mentioned before, add it as a factor in your vendor vetting process. 

Kaltura’s products and services operate on the AWS cloud, and benefit from Amazon’s commitment to sustainability. AWS is committed to energy efficiency, and 100% renewable energy by 2025.  AWS cloud’s efficiency = Kaltura’s efficiency = your company’s efficiency. 

Kaltura’s business operations use Office365. Microsoft is also committed to sustainability and will use 100% renewable energy sources by 2025.  Office365’s efficiency = Kaltura’s efficiency = your company’s efficiency. 

Continually optimize your products and services for energy efficiency 

Your company’s products and services, too, should be assessed based on your sustainability strategy. Calculate the energy consumption and environmental impact of producing and running your products and services and continually look for new tools, processes, vendors, and solutions that might help you lower that impact. 

Kaltura’s energy consumption is driven mainly by the computation and storage required to maintain video archives for Kaltura’s clients.  We try to optimize this by evaluating new video formats and CODECS, to reduce computational and storage requirements associated with processing and maintaining the video archive.  We also regularly evaluate the state of the consumer market and improve the transcoding technologies to maintain the minimum amount of video required to reach your audience.  Our content lifecycle management tools automate retention policies that minimize the size of the video archive. In combination, these reduce Kaltura’s computational and storage footprints, and corresponding energy requirements.  

Technology and design = Kaltura’s efficiency = your company’s efficiency 

Part of this energy efficiency review could be the very buildings your organization occupies. Your offices and their location can highly impact employee commute and transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, etc. Kaltura’s main offices are located in LEED Gold–certified buildings. LEED is a green building certification program that gives points to buildings based on their level of compliance with various aspects of sustainability, with Gold being its highest rating.