'Evaluating 36,000 products is a big job': RM on net zero plan

RM group strategy and customer director Chris Rothwell opens up on the education specialist’s efforts to curb scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions

This interview was carried out as part of CRN's Channel Net Zero Report, which is available exclusively to CRN Essential subscribers

It is not too late to enter the CRN Tech Impact Awards. See here for more information.

What's the regulatory backdrop you and other publicly listed are facing when it comes to sustainability?

CR: We have an obligation to share our carbon emissions. We've had that for a while. And then the big change coming through is related to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). We're going through that now. It connects the impact of climate change on us as an organisation and our ability to continue to operate. The TCFD team is saying that, across the world, climate change is not properly factored into the risk and investment in financial markets - and that that needs to change. That means we have to take a long, hard look at our business and ask, in the face of climate change, what actions we need to take today to ensure we are operating in a sustainable way for the future? That's a relatively significant overhead that we'll need to take as a public company. We'll do that in our next round of annual reports.

We want to be able to make a commitment to get to net zero ahead of 2050.

In your 2021 annual report, you talked about how you're looking to introduce a net zero target very soon. What's the plan?

CR: We've made pretty good progress on scope 1 and 2 already, including our physical real estate. Whether we've moved into rented space, or we've built specific facilities, we've done that with a much stronger environmental and sustainable eye. That means our office in Abingdon is solar powered. It means that we're buying renewable energy and it means that as we've built our distribution centre in Nottingham it has much stronger environmental, sustainable heating, energy, LED lighting. We're starting to look at pilots for carbon offsetting.

The scope 3 element is much more complicated. It's across 36,000 products and 4,000 suppliers. So it's a big job. But we want to be able to make a commitment to get to net zero ahead of 2050.

Of those 36,000 products, how many relate to your IT services arm, RM Education?

CR: That 36,000 predominantly refers to our resources and curriculum businesses that we have as well. But on the IT services, the same principle applies. And we're having exactly the same conversations. What's interesting on the IT services side is how we work with supply chain and vendors to think about sustainable manufacture of devices and energy efficiency of devices. The other area that is really fascinating, and where there's an opportunity and challenge for us all to work together, is about then how do we translate that into meaningful impact for our customers - all of our schools customers know that they need to make progress on these things, too.

It's about helping our customers make changes, for example by moving from running their own servers, which typically if they're running them in their own office or data centre, it's pretty energy inefficient. Whereas moving them to the cloud, whether that's with Microsoft, or Google or somebody else, typically, you're moving those to far more efficient services.

We're definitely seeing that symbiotic relationship beginning to emerge where some of our customers are really challenging us to go a bit further and faster. Then in some cases, we're working with suppliers to say ‘here's the kind of expectations we have, how far away are you today and what else needs to happen and start to make some purchasing choices as a result of that'.

Are you at a point where you may side with one vendor over another based not on price or performance but on the sustainability of their offering?

CR: It's definitely a factor. There are multiple requirements in any given scenario. But the sustainability credentials of a supplier is definitely becoming a far greater decision-making factor for us and for our customers. Devices are an easy example. Yes, it's about the way the device is manufactured. But it's also about the energy efficiency of that device when it's in use, and the full lifecycle of that device afterwards. We've taken part in a partnership scheme with HP, called the Education Learning Partnership, that's really to do with device trade in, but part of that is about how the devices that were traded are responsibly recycled. Those sorts of programmes are going to become a much bigger factor for people as they think about the full lifecycle.

What does scope 3 encompass?

CR: We've tried to break down scope 3 into more manageable chunk. We would think about the scope 3 that would fall upstream that's typically to do with how things are manufactured, procured, delivered, supplied. Yes, it does include things like employee travel, though that's a relatively small component for us. And then we also think about the downstream impact. So once a product or service is in the hands of a customer, what's the full lifecycle of that customer. If it comes with packaging, what happens to that packaging. Is it recyclable is or is the packaging part of the product and therefore has an ongoing useful life?

There are some areas where you can look at it and say we can have a much faster, more direct impact - for instance the changes that you can make around employee travel. Then there are other areas where you're dependent on your suppliers and customers to make meaningful change. And that's where the collaboration with your channel, with your supply chain, with your customer base and with your partners becomes really important because clearly, our scope 3 emissions are other organisations' scope 1 and 2 emissions. If we all want to make progress on our scope 1 and 2, then then collectively, we will make progress on that scope 3, but it's definitely the most nuanced and the most complicated.

What's your advice for peers that might be just embarking on becoming more sustainable?

CR: One thing we did in 2019 that really helped is employ somebody with specific expertise to come and help us. There was a lot happening within the company that was related to sustainability, but there wasn't anybody coordinating that.

We wanted to look at getting certified, and are currently going through that process with ISO 14001. We brought in that expertise to help us bring those things together, identify where we were doing well and where we had gaps, and put in the process and governance to make sure we could continue to make progress.

Can you just put into context the scale of the challenges for, for that industry that lies ahead?

CR: There's no doubt that we have a really significant challenge ahead. But I do think that in the technology sector, the IT services sector, that challenges is coupled with a really exciting opportunity, because we have the capability to work with our customers in order to help them make their own progress as well