Our sustainability potential is exponential

Behavioral transformation

Those of us already investing and working in IoT can most likely agree that there is no lack of imagination and potential across our industry. Innovation abounds when we think of what humans can accomplish with a challenge, a network, a microchip, an antenna, and a battery.

Along with the obvious potential energy savings and emission reductions IoT can bring, our industry is transforming human behavior and positively impacting societies; socially, environmentally, and in terms of economic development.

u‑blox customers around the world are using IoT to innovate environmental management, agriculture, education, social care, transportation, manufacturing, energy management, and building automation, among many other aspects of our daily lives. These innovations often create low-carbon business models or have the knock-on effect of carbon emission reduction due to efficiencies and other contributing factors. They also often overcome barriers to information, knowledge, or much needed human interaction, making a significant positive social impact.

“u‑blox has a key role in contributing to the innovation driving sustainability across IoT – and a responsibility to produce our products and services sustainably.”

As an example, IoT innovation is expanding the healthcare sector’s capacity. With healthcare systems worldwide under more cost and resource pressure than ever before, IoT is rapidly reshaping how patient care is delivered. Innovative connected care solutions are extending healthcare to the patient beyond the physician’s office or hospital setting, providing patient-centric care, and reducing the load on our stretched healthcare systems. Chronic care management, remote monitoring, and medication management, including AI for proactive healthcare strategies, are some of the areas leveraging IoT.

IoT is poised to make an exponential contribution to a more sustainable world, and as a member of this critical ecosystem, u‑blox plays a key role in contributing to the innovation driving sustainability across it – and a responsibility to produce our products and services sustainably. Sustainability has always been at the heart of what we do, but we know there is much more we can accomplish. So together with our stakeholders, we are going further.

In 2012, we signed the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative encompassing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations as a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for everyone. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice.

In 2020, we renewed our Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Materiality Analysis to identify and prioritize the areas where u‑blox can make a significant economic, environmental and social impact - areas that are important to, and highly influence, the decision-making of u‑blox and our stakeholders.

We have identified several topics, which we have grouped into five areas and aligned with the SDGs to form the basis of our Sustainability Strategy:

• Business ethics, privacy, and security
• Employees
• Environmental responsibility
• Supply chain responsibility
• Communities

Our specific sustainability goals, projects, and commitments are all designed to contribute towards one or more of the SDGs and are shaping how we want to organize ourselves, take action, report and communicate on sustainability in the foreseeable future.

We published our first sustainability report in 2020 to document our performance and achievements related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. 

“Sustainability has always been at the heart of what we do, but we know there is much more we can accomplish. So together with our stakeholders, we are going further.”