Sustainability doesn’t work without transparency

Halide perovskite solar cells have in recent years emerged as a potential alternative to silicon-based photovoltaics due to their outstanding performance, having reached energy conversion efficiency comparable to the currently available silicon counterparts in less than a decade of research. Therefore, in addition to vast academic interest, industries are paying close attention to the development of perovskite-based photovoltaics.

Seco Tools is uniquely placed to make a strong contribution to the circular economy, which prioritizes separating economic activity from the consumption of finite resources and designing ways to remove waste from our system of economic activity. Though it is by no means the only aspect, recycling plays a vital role in the circular economy by asking us to look at how we use the earth’s scarce and finite resources, and what can be done to ensure that we extract maximum value and usage from them. Recycling will play a key role in reaching Seco Tools ambitious goal of being 90% circular by the year 2030, with a number of broad changes to processes and business models leading the way. “It’s a challenging target, but we see this as very important for our company and our business,” says Ted Forslund, Sustainability & Audit Coordinator at Seco Tools. “What is good for Seco Tools is that we already have very good recycling processes, so now it’s about creating a good partnership with our clients so that they understand the value of us buying back tools, so that it becomes a closed circle where nothing goes to waste.”

There is no shortage of early-stage startups developing software applications to support carbon accounting and emissions management — there’s even one, Sinai Technologies, working on analytics to help businesses set an internal price on carbon.  As corporate interest in integrating and managing sustainability metrics intensifies, however, the category is attracting the notice of much more established enterprise software players.