Sustainability – innovaphone Reduces the Ecological Footprint for a Better Future

 written by Patrycja Leinekugel & Gregor Bewernick | October 28^th, 2024

Do You Know What the Ecological Footprint is?

I would like to start this blog with a familiar and pretty image. Imagine, you are at the beach, taking a stroll at the seaside. Your footprints are left behind in the warm sand under your feet. What happens to these traces you leave behind? They disappear quickly. Usually very fast after they have been made, with the next wave that hits the beach. Then, no trace is left behind in the landscape.  Sadly, this is quite different to our ecological footprint. Our lifestyle, consumerism, food industry, waste, mobility, living space with gas and oil heating – we need more resources than the earth can provide. In fact, we would need 1.7 planets to cover our needs.¹

What does the Ecological Footprint Determine?

The ecological footprint was developed in the mid-1990s by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees. It determines to which extent the ecosystem and natural resources of the earth are affected.² Mathis Wackernagel is a Swiss sustainability researcher and environmental scientist. He is also the president of the Global Footprint Network (GFN), an international research organization dedicated to measuring and reducing the ecological footprint.³ Ever since 1961⁴, the GFN has been calculating and publishing the day on which mathematically all global resources for the year would be exhausted.⁵ This day is called Earth Overshoot Day. This year (2024), the Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 1^st – one day earlier than in 2023. The resources of our planet were already exhausted in August. Here is a simple analogy: Imagine you have already spent your entire annual salary in August, before you even got paid for the upcoming months. Ecologically speaking, we are already living highly in debt. Since August 1^st, we have been using more resources than we have.⁶

Are You Green? Calculate your Ecological Footprint

Have you ever calculated your own ecological footprint? Take the online test and find out how green your lifestyle is. You will be asked questions on dietary habits, living conditions, mobility and travel. Once you answer these questions, your ecological footprint will be calculated. See how your daily habits impact the environment. Maybe you can even introduce some tiny changes to your routines to make a difference.

Sustainability & Ecological Footprint – How do They Correlate?

Sustainability is an omnipresent topic. There is a private awareness that many of us have: We try to use the bike more frequently, take the train to work, buy less meat and fish, prefer plant-based products, monitor our shopping habits, produce less waste and throw away less food.
At the professional level, companies invest in sustainable business models, develop plans and realize projects aimed at sustainability. Why so? We are all painfully aware of the impact climate change and a shortage of resources has. We try to live more eco-friendly – on a personal as well as on a corporate level. The ecological footprint is a tool to measure how eco-friendly we live and how much our lifestyle pollutes the environment.

innovaphone’s Green Philosophy

“innovaphone VoIP solutions have been green right from the start.” This statement is from our first blog post on sustainability and Green IT with innovaphone products. Our post Green IT Begins with a Sustainable Telephone System elaborates how our innovaphone PBX incl. collaboration and conferencing platform has the lowest energy consumption available on the market. innovaphone VoIP gateways in their sturdy steel casing are a pioneer in terms of resource efficiency. Small but highly performant.

Dagmar Geer, CEO of innovaphone AG, explains: “Ecologically responsible and sustainable behavior have always been an important guiding principle for our business decisions.” innovaphone’s green philosophy includes: Sensible use of resources, refurbishing of hardware, a modern and energy-efficient company building, electric business vehicles. These are all contributors to innovaphone’s successfully completed ISO 14001 certification. An environmental team with an environmental management officer ensures that the standards are maintained at all times.

But we go one step further: we help our customers to act sustainably. With our solution, older telephone systems can remain in use by being migrated to new technologies. Sustainability is firmly anchored at all levels of our company.

Sustainability with innovaphone: We Repair our Devices

Our colleague Gregor from the Repairs department states: “We repair our devices instead of just throwing them away.” Read on to learn more about Gregor’s point of view as an electronics engineer for devices and systems.

To what extent is sustainability incorporated into the life cycle of innovaphone products? How does this affect the ecological footprint?

For me, products are part of a cycle that includes production, repair, proper disposal of waste and proper recycling. The less waste produced, the better. That’s why we repair our devices – actually at component level. Luckily, innovaphone shares this opinion: Our department is connected to development, production and supply chain management, and our repair warehouse is well-equipped.

Do you use spare parts recycled from old devices, or are new components manufactured?

It depends. Some components are new and identical to the ones used in new devices because we need a minimum stock level. Some components, however, are recycled from broken devices. By doing so, we reduce our ecological footprint.

How does your work contribute to a long lifetime for hardware?

Since we repair our devices, we quickly realize if certain problems occur frequently. This allows us to be proactive at an early stage. Obviously, we do not have supervision. But with our experience, we are able to quickly fix the problem with little effort or re-work so that the hardware will be up to date again. If something is beyond repair, we can dismantle the device professionally and dispose of what can no longer be used.

Do you have plans to further optimize the repair and recycling processes?

The more you are involved in reducing the ecological footprint, the smaller it gets. This includes green IT, electricity from renewable resources, waste separation where we approach local waste disposal companies, and much more. Packaging is also a factor, but we have to be realistic – we cannot influence everything. We can already make a checkmark with several points but there is always more you can do.

Conclusion:

“Our actions of today determine how the world of tomorrow will look like” – With this thought in mind, we want to reduce the ecological footprint, use resources efficiently and minimize the environmental impact. We take responsibility for the careful use of resources and want to make a valuable contribution with our sustainable business practices. Our products and solutions enable progressive modernization of legacy systems, minimize the necessity of business trips thanks to video conferencing technology and are highly energy-efficient. We actively want to reduce our ecological footprint.

 
 
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