Humanity’s interaction with the environment over the past 100 years has brought on climate change resulting in catastrophic events like extreme weather, floods and wildfires. Angelique Dickson, President of Inogen Alliance, says, “Many of the solutions needed to mitigate the impact of climate change are available, and multinational organisations and their consulting partners are working to implement them.”
Inogen Alliance is an alliance of 78 companies that have worked together globally over the past 20 years providing consulting services on environment, health and safety, sustainability and ESG. Dickson explains how the Alliance works:
“We work with a business in their home country, while ensuring their needs are addressed at both a global and a local level. Through the Alliance, we create a global team that is specific to each client’s needs. Even though each consultant on the team may work for a different company, our global team will act like one company. We can provide truly local expertise on a global scale.”
Water stewardship is one example where Inogen Alliance provides climate change-related services. Beatrice Bizzaro, Sustainability Consultant at HPC, explains:
“Water is a shared resource that really doesn't belong to anyone but that we all use. Inogen Alliance has conducted source vulnerability assessments for a large multinational retailer that operates in the cosmetic industry.”
The aim of ensuring long-term water availability led to the client going beyond management and adopting a stewardship approach to “reduce and reach ambitious water reduction targets and implement stakeholder-based actions that would create a shared responsibility when managing the water resource”.
As consultants, Inogen Alliance sees the impact of climate change and the legacy of neglecting the environment. It often advises cleaning up contaminated sites and prepares for sustainable land and water use in the future.
For companies beginning their ESG journey, Alex Ferguson, Managing Director at Delta-Simons, says that the key to success is benchmarking:
“You need to understand what's material to you as a business. Every business is different. Carbon footprinting is at the heart of climate change, so it's a good place to start: you can set a benchmark, you can set targets and you can try to deliver against those.”
Ferguson describes the three scopes of emissions: “Scope one is what you are directly responsible for running your business. Scope two is the energy that you use. Scope three is the supply chain, transportation, raw materials, emissions from employees commuting to and from the office. For many businesses, over 70 per cent of their emissions are in scope three.”
Nan Kjellberg, Sustainability Consultant at DGE Group, talks about the work the alliance has done with a global beverage company over the past many years:
“We started by carbon footprinting its entire value chain in 2014. Since then we have supported it with in-depth analysis of its raw materials, packaging, life cycle assessments, setting relevant targets and action plans. And we support it day to day on this journey towards a more sustainable future.”
Dickson says that the ultimate mission of the Inogen Alliance is to make the world a safer, cleaner, and more sustainable place by becoming the consultants of choice for multinational organisations determined to meet the goal for 2050 of net zero.
This cannot be achieved alone, but Inogen Alliance brings together a wealth of disciplines and technical expertise globally to enable clients to meet their goals.
From the 78 companies that are part of the alliance this film was sponsored by Antea Group USA, Delta-Simons, denkstatt, denxpert, DGE Group, HPC, Geotest, MediTerra and Redlog.
