Overview
We want to heighten environmental awareness and responsibility amongst our colleagues, audiences and societies. We aim to do this through our platforms, collaborations and partnerships.
When it comes to our own business, we apply the precautionary principle when assessing the environmental and health impacts of our operations. We do not operate any businesses in Sweden that require separate environmental reporting or licensing. However, we report on and monitor our carbon footprint and energy consumption to help us minimise our impact. As most of our emissions come from air travel, we encourage our staff to travel smarter while offering tools that enable them to travel less. It is also important to us that we work with responsible suppliers. This is why our pay-TV business Viasat, for example, ensures that its set-top-boxes are free of conflict minerals.
The integration of our MTGx businesses adds a new dimension to our environmental work. Several of these companies produce live events and festivals on a global scale, and we will work to integrate these activities into our future environmental strategy and reporting.
Environmental team work
Björn Mosell, Global Real Estate and Facilities Manager
Sabina Lindqvist, Travel Manager
What were MTG’s biggest achievements in 2017 from an environmental point of view?
Björn Mosell: MTG’s offices are fun places to work – but it is very important that we keep them to be sustainable too. That’s why we mapped the energy usage in our facilities in Sweden during 2017, which will help us identify ways to power, heat and cool them more efficiently. It’s also a big step towards meeting the 20% energy efficiency target set out in the European Union’s Energy Efficiency Directive. To reach the target we need to think out of the box and challenge the way we have done things up to now, it’s a challenge but we are happy to accept it! It helps to know that we’re already doing well – in 2017, we once again received a solid ‘B’ rating from the CDP global environmental disclosure system.
Sabina Lindqvist: I joined the company as a Travel Manager six months ago, and it feels like our approach to travel is moving forwards. Business travel is the biggest contributor to MTG’s carbon footprint, and we took actions to address this in 2017. For example, we updated our global travel directive, highlighting that we should choose video conferencing over travel, something that both saves time, money and especially the environment. When travelling we encourage our staff to choose train over air travel particularly for domestic destinations and of course if flying, to travel smart using direct flights as well as planning their trips to minimise unnecessary flying.
How big was our carbon footprint in 2017?
Sabina: MTG’s climate impact during 2017 totaled 23,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. About 84% of MTG’s emissions in 2017 arose from business travel, with air travel representing 70% of total emissions. Almost all the remaining emissions came from energy use in facilities (14%).
This means that our overall impact increased by 49.7% from 2016. However, it’s important to bear in mind that 2017 was the first year that our digital ventures companies were included in MTG’s measurement. Our global esports businesses ESL and DreamHack operate events around the world, which led to higher emissions from travel for MTG as a whole than in previous years. I think it is fair to highlight that if we exclude our digital ventures companies from the data we decreased our total emissions by 12% from 2016. This shows that we do need to work on the integration of these companies into our environmental processes and work.
How can we minimise our impact in 2018?
Björn: As MTG’s Global Category Real Estate & Facilities Manager, everywhere I look in our buildings I see possibilities! We already have recycling sorting containers in Stockholm, and we’ve just invested in two compressing machines that reduce the number of vehicles needed to pick up our recycling from 4 to 1. The ROI is under a year and we use less space for garbage, which frees space for business related things. We’re also encouraging everyone to use only plastic bottles at MTG events – it’s much more efficient to transport than glass and we get money back via the Swedish deposit refund system. In 2018, we’ll donate this to an organization working with vulnerable girls in Dominican Republic. This is a project that Office Recycling is driving, and they are the ones who collect and deposit our PET. I shall have to add that they transport everything fossil fuel free.
Sabina: Everybody at MTG can drive a larger change by doing small things differently – using the right recycling bin in the kitchen, turning the lights off when leaving a room, choosing a hybrid rental car, taking a Skype call instead of meeting in person and so on. Directives and policies make a statement, but people make the difference.