They could win this year's sustainability award at the Tech Awards 2022
Heroes of the tech industry. Through their actions, they contribute to positive sustainable development for employees, the organization, the industry, the business community and society at large.
This year's Sustainability In Tech Award is presented to the organization or company in the tech industry that has contributed to positive sustainable development through its actions.
IDG and TechSverige are behind the award. The prize will be awarded at the Tech Awards in Stockholm on March 22 - and here are this year's finalists:
Doconomy - 2030 Calculator
Over half, 60%, of an individual's carbon footprint can be linked to consumption. The Doconomy 2030 Calculator measures, tracks and visualizes the carbon footprint for suppliers of consumer products, so that their customers can easily see the climate impact of their purchases and make informed choices. Suppliers are offered a quick and cost-effective method to calculate the carbon footprint of their products and are thus encouraged to create better climate-friendly products.
The 2030 Calculator can be used in the design and purchasing phases to select materials and processes, or to communicate the carbon footprint to customers. Today, the calculator can be used to calculate the carbon footprint of, for example, clothes, shoes, watches, jewelry, furniture, household items and sports equipment. Soon, food and beverages will be launched, followed by electronics later this year.
The launch of Calculator 2030 generated global attention and was awarded the Cannes Lions Sustainable Development Goals Grand Prix 2021.
Foxway - Halving the carbon footprint through a circular tech world
Foxway focuses on one of the IT world's biggest challenges, the life cycle management of computers and mobiles - from purchase to reuse or resale on another market - or ultimately environmentally sustainable scrapping.
The IT industry's carbon footprint is largely created during the production of hardware. Each IT workplace currently has a negative carbon footprint of almost 1 ton of carbon dioxide, and a large part of this is linked to the life of the products. Foxway's idea is to enable a circular tech economy as a partner. Through well-designed processes, devices returned by customers are sorted, categorized and managed into a circular flow to be resold. Batteries are replaced, screens are repaired, and quality is ensured in terms of safety, waterproofing, dustproofing and more so that the device can be classified for resale.
The company has grown rapidly in recent years and now employs more than 1 000 people in Europe.
Kivra - Digital receipts
Nearly 4 billion paper receipts are produced and printed every year in Sweden. Most of them go straight into the garbage. This is equivalent to about 50 000 trees and 2 000 tons of carbon dioxide straight into the atmosphere.
Kivra launched its digital receipt service in April 2020 and in its first year managed to avoid 6.1 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and 15250 kilograms of paper from being produced, saving 728 trees.
It is also likely to have had a positive impact on the health of store staff, who no longer have to handle paper tags containing hazardous substances while avoiding monotonous movements. Several of Sweden's largest retailers have joined the service, which has around 2.3 million users.
The transition to digital receipts benefits everyone - users, businesses and the environment.
Lingio - Vocational Swedish that solves social exclusion
SEK 270 billion a year - that's the cost of exclusion, according to the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise. In December 2021, 181,000 Swedes were unemployed, half of them long-term unemployed. It is hardest to find work for those born outside the EU who do not speak Swedish.
Lingio was founded during the refugee crisis in 2015 to solve the burning issue of exclusion and language skills through digital, scalable, fun and effective learning. Based on the Swedish Public Employment Service's reports on where the jobs of the future are, paired with an analysis of which jobs are most suitable for foreign-born people, they have developed 25 courses in vocational Swedish for these priority roles. In addition to the courses, there is the mobile AI module Lingio Translate, which is focused on professional Swedish, and Lingio AI Pronunciation is a function for practicing pronunciation.
Lingio currently has around 50 customers among municipalities, companies, trade unions and industry organizations. They reach thousands of users every day.
Swedish Forest Agency - AI against forest damage
Forest damage caused by insects and fungal diseases is a problem that causes major losses for forest owners. The spruce bark beetle alone has cost the Swedish forest industry over SEK 7.5 billion since 2018. The Swedish Forest Agency's damage experts normally survey the trees on foot, which is resource and time consuming.
Since 2020, the Swedish Forest Agency has developed a method using drones and AI to identify damaged trees in the forest, which makes the work much easier and more efficient. By using drones to collect data, it is possible to cover significantly larger forest areas than on foot and the AI analysis is both accurate and scalable. The data collected by the drones is processed in a solution built together with Combitech and Microsoft.
The digital infrastructure is built in a way that allows for easy cloning, with the aim of helping other organizations in the world to combat local forest damage.
The Swedish Forest Agency's AI project and solution is an excellent example of how AI can help make our environment better and solve a large and costly problem, where the solution is applicable in other organizations and businesses.
Telia Sverige AB - Telia Travel Emission Insights
In Sweden, passenger transportation accounts for 26 percent of total carbon emissions. In November 2021, Telia launched the Travel Emission Insights service, which enables municipalities and regions to map carbon dioxide emissions from passenger transport to make it easier to decide on measures that can help reduce emissions, such as building a new bicycle lane or investing in a tramway.
By the end of the year, around ten municipalities across the Nordic region had purchased the service. With Travel Emission Insights, cities, municipalities and regions can work in a data-driven and iterative way to reduce the climate footprint of passenger transport.
Travel Insights is a further development of the existing Crowd Insights service, which provides information on travel patterns based on anonymized and aggregated data from millions of Telia subscribers. The service contributes to better and more sustainable societies and provides a concrete basis for decisions to reduce carbon emissions from passenger traffic.