Greenovation Summit: Successful premiere in the "Silicon Uzvalley"
On September 12, 2024, the first Greenovation Summit took place on the premises of Bühler AG in Uzwil. Around 150 visitors, including many decision-makers from SMEs, listened to the presentations of over a dozen speakers and exchanged experiences on the topic of sustainability. And three companies were honored with the Greenovation Award.
The venue for the first edition of the Greenovation Summit was well chosen: "Cubic", the Bühler Group's innovation center that opened in 2019. In this "nucleus", innovations for the food, animal feed and high-end materials sectors are being worked on every day. This led presenter Mona Vetsch to use the term "Silicon Uzvalley", referring to the often underestimated innovative strength of companies in Eastern Switzerland in general. And it was not without pride that Stefan Scheiber, CEO of Bühler AG, referred in his welcome address to the opportunities his company has to contribute to more sustainable food production with new technological developments.
Challenges in the consumer goods industry
The Greenovation Summit offered a foray into almost all sectors. From the consumer goods industry, Sandra Banholzer, CEO of herbal shampoo manufacturer Rausch AG from Kreuzlingen, reported on the challenge of having to commit to the standards of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) under pressure from major customers. Even though Rausch has long been committed to sustainability, e.g. in terms of packaging materials and economical consumption, the aim now is to explicitly measure the impact of these measures. Or Claude Rieser from Step Zero showed the rocky road to tackling the problem of microplastics caused by the abrasion of synthetic shoe soles with new materials.
It was also about sustainability in tourism. Thomas Kirchhofer, Director of St.Gallen Bodensee Tourismus, sees the strongest lever for change in the transfer of knowledge because a wide variety of stakeholder groups are involved. Christian Klein from The Tschuggen Collection, with the construction of a completely CO2-neutral hotel in Arosa, showed what is technically possible in order to offer guests the comfort they are accustomed to - even if compromises sometimes have to be made, for example when offering out-of-season fruit at the breakfast buffet.
Employee involvement and building for the future
Further topics were covered in four breakout sessions. How to involve employees in the sustainable transformation of a company was one of the questions discussed there. Florian Hoffmann, CEO of tfy-consult, pointed out a common mistake: That employees are only involved once management has decided to implement measures. It is therefore better to involve employees as early as the analysis of the current situation and the definition of the strategy.
The other three breakout sessions focused on the topics of energy, compliance and the construction industry. Andreas Zindel, CEO of Zindel United, sees sustainable material development as the key to enabling "grandchildren-friendly" construction. Among other things, his company has developed a CO2-neutral concrete called KLARK. Maura Hegi, founder of the consulting firm Ecoleader GmbH, pointed out in her session that sustainability requirements should be used to transform them into future-proof corporate goals.
So that less food is lost
One of the biggest levers for achieving the climate targets lies in food, or to be more precise: in more sustainable food production and more conscious consumption. Béatrice Conde-Petit, Sustainability Officer at Bühler AG, explained how, for example, the waste of raw materials can be reduced by making greater use of by-products from grain processing. Bühler is also working in countries of the Global South to establish so-called "food parks". These are factory clusters that concentrate large parts of the food production value chain in a single location in order to reduce unnecessary transportation routes.
Better no sustainability marketing?
Jacqueline Schmid, Head of Sustainability at St.Gallen Kantonalbank, represented the financial sector. What was previously based on a great deal of goodwill and voluntariness has now become an obligation due to regulatory pressure. It was therefore all the more important to have created clean structures from the outset, to focus on the essentials and to have anchored responsibility at all levels, the speaker concluded.
"Sustainability" as a term doesn't work in marketing - and never really has. This is the insight that Johanna Gollnhofer, Director of the Institute for Marketing and Customer Insight at the University of St.Gallen (HSG), shared with the audience. Who is prepared to pay more for a product that is associated with "sacrifice" or "loss of quality"? After all, it is precisely these two terms that have turned a large proportion of consumers into real "sustainability grouches". It would therefore be more effective to simply focus on the customer benefits that can be achieved with sustainability.
Three Greenovation Awards for companies from Eastern Switzerland
The presentation of the Greenovation Award also celebrated a premiere at the end of the event. This award was presented for the three categories "Projects", "Products" and "Services". An expert jury awarded the prize to the following companies:
- Projects" category: Huber Fenster, Herisau, for their project of prefabricated wooden houses in the Ukraine
- Products" category: Nussbaum Matzingen AG for its cans made from recycled aluminum
- Services" category: originate GmbH, St.Gallen, for consulting and measurement services to reduce the ecological footprint of building technology and machinery.
These three award winners, as well as the speakers, showed how many approaches and concrete solutions are available today to actively tackle the required sustainability goals. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to achieve them and to answer the question of who will ultimately have to pay the price - and not just in Silicon Uzvalley.
