Ross Thompson, the CEO of Greenbox Group, a prominent ITAD company, made a significant impact during his attendance at the prestigious Australian Financial Review ESG Summit 2023. The summit, dedicated to exploring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, served as a platform for Thompson to showcase Greenbox Group’s commitment to sustainability within the ITAD industry. Here are some key insights from our CEO:
Very interesting insights from two of Australia’s main regulatory authorities ASIC and Australian Prudential Regulation Authority around the move towards more of standardised approach for ESG reporting, much of which seems to be getting driven out of the UK and European Union.
“Green Hushing” (as a flow on from the more commonly known term “Green Washing”), seems to be the new ESG buzzword on the street, with the suggestion being that there appears to have been a recent trend of many large and listed ASX companies quietly taking down their publicly stated ESG commitments, as they become more intimately aware of how challenging the ESG dynamic is, and err on the side of caution from a potential litigation perspective. Of most interest to me were the panel discussions where executives and thought leaders from a variety of different industries and market segments discussed the challenges and successes that they are having in tackling their Environment, Society and Governance commitments from a planning, execution, and reporting perspective.
One of the surprises of the day was how little the “S” and “G” of “ESG” was talked to. They did raise particularly valid points around how policy makers were battling to keep up with how rapidly technologies such as #ai were advancing, and from a cyber governance perspective, referenced the recent Optus, Medibank and Latitude Financial hacks leading to a need to develop deeper and more diversified skills (only roughly 25% of the 935,000 people employed in tech in Australia are female). No need to talk about the PwC debacle that is currently unfolding from a governance perspective! One other thing that wasn’t mentioned right until the end of the Summit was the fact that today is World Environment Day, so a big shout out to everyone around the world involved with bringing our collective global environment to the front of everyone’s minds today! Congrats to all the The Australian Financial Review panel chairs, for stimulating such informative discussions throughout the day, we’re all the better for your contributions throughout the day! A very special congratulations as well to the extended Greenbox Group Pty Ltd team for making the AFR Sustainability Leaders List for the 2023 Technology, Media, and Telecommunications category, with oversight provided by Boston Consulting Group (BCG)! Greenbox Group has supported many of Australia’s largest corporate, government, and education organisations via its now certified Climate Active carbon neutral ICT services over the last 23 years, and I look forward to seeing who the winners in the different categories of these prestigious awards are later in