Westcon-Comstor ESG boss rallies distributors to do more on sustainability

Mark McLardie gets candid about sustainability barriers for distributors, and how the market can better play its part

Westcon-Comstor's head of ESG has called on distributors to put more pressure on their couriers to start making more robust commitments to sustainability.

The distribution giant kicked off its own environmental journey at the end of 2022 with the appointment of Mark McLardie (pictured) as its head of ESG to lead its fresh sustainability drive.

Talking to CRN about how its green goals are coming along, what it's aiming to achieve next, and what the distribution market as a whole can do more to help the cause, McLardie points to logistics.

"Something that we need to be doing more around is on the logistics aspect."

"The world of distribution has changed. Ten or 15 years ago distributors were seen as box shifters, moving hardware from A to B.

"Whereas our business is certainly changing, and more and more of our revenue has been derived from recurring offerings," McLardie says.

"But hardware is still a core part of our business, and I think it's a natural expectation for our partners that they expect us to be driving reductions in transportation.

"Although we don't own our own fleet of vehicles, we're working with third party couriers."

McLardie reveals he is "not convinced" those couriers are doing enough to decarbonise their own businesses.

"There's an argument that because of the nature of their industry, it's inherently quite challenging, because the reality is, they're moving a lot of stuff by air freight, and we've got sustainable aviation fuel, which is one potential way to reduce those emissions.

"I think that distribution in general needs to put more pressure on these couriers to start making more robust commitments."

Update on net zero emissions by 2050

Westcon-Comstor had its target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 formally validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in October last year.

Giving CRN an update on the progress of this target, McLardie reveals some struggles with scope one emissions.

"From a scope two perspective, we've been doing very well. This year we're expecting to have delivered a 12 per cent year-on-year reduction.

"Scope one emissions have been more challenging for us. We have a company car fleet, we're still developing a plan to transition to electric vehicles.

"We've started in the UK. We're also making quite a lot of changes in the Netherlands, where we have a lot of cars.

"There's other markets where people are doing more mileage in our existing vehicles, petrol and diesel engines, so our emissions are going in the wrong direction. So we need to get a handle around that."

The distributor's base year for tracking its sustainability progress is FY22, when the market was still coming out of the impacts of Covid.

McLardie admits the distributor considered whether it was making things more difficult for itself by choosing to have a base year during Covid where consumption and emissions were smaller as people weren't travelling.

"But we thought that regardless, let's set the bar high," he states.

"Thinking about scope three emissions, most of the emissions are linked to the products and services that we are buying from our vendors. And the reality is, the last couple of years, we've had really a great level of financial growth within our business. Revenue numbers are going up.

"The reality is right now, because we're relying on a spend-based methodology in most cases, to calculate those emissions, the more we spend, the greater our emissions.

"So one of our priorities when thinking about the goods that we're buying from our vendors, is moving away from that spend-based methodology, so we can actually more accurately start accounting for some of the reductions that we're expecting."

Continue reading to find out what Westcon wants to achieve next and McLardie's advice to distributors getting started on their sustainability journey...

Westcon-Comstor ESG boss rallies distributors to do more on sustainability

Mark McLardie gets candid about sustainability barriers for distributors, and how the market can better play its part

Westcon's next green goal

The distributor recently achieved 100 per cent renewable electricity in the UK. Next, it wants to get to 100 per cent across Europe.

"We've just finished work on our FY24 year-end carbon footprint. Our year ended in February, and we've been busy collecting the data and crunching the numbers.

"We are just shy of 90 per cent renewable electricity across European operations, which isn't insignificant because most of our operations are there; about 60 per cent of the company revenue is generated there.

"It's great to get to 90 per cent but we just need to push that final ten per cent over the line."

McLardie goes on to detail how Westcon is grappling with the remaining ten per cent.

"Where it becomes a bit more challenging is that what's really remaining in terms of that ten per cent is that we're occupying space in shared buildings, so procurement of that electricity tends to be landlord controlled.

"It's not directly within our control to be able to influence that, but that's a big part of what we're doing, generally, in terms of working with our landlords to try and push them towards procuring renewable electricity to power facilities, but also things like energy efficiency."

Advice for getting started

McLardie outlines the most common barriers for distributors beginning their sustainability journey, and suggests starting with data to get the ball rolling.

"From a distribution point of view, and in fact, probably for resellers as well, I think there's recognition that 90 plus per cent of sustainability impacts sit within the supply chain.

"And the vast majority are linked to the products that we are selling on behalf of our vendors.

"I think one of the challenges is that we don't enjoy a traditional customer, supplier relationship with our vendors.

"Another big challenge I think is being able to say with confidence, what you believe your material topics to be.

"And in order for you to make that determination, you need to have good data, to be able to look at things and decide which impacts are biggest, most significant, and therefore you need to prioritise.

"Right now, it's challenging to some extent to be able to do that, because you're wholly reliant on data."