Applying sustainability to respect the boundaries of our planet

The event was brilliantly organized by Generation B (B stands for “Be the change”) a group of young and very motivated Bühler employees. Bühler is a Swiss multinational company founded in 1860 and active in the business of process solutions for food and mobility. With billions of people coming into contact every day with Bühler technologies, the company is in a unique position to explore solutions for a more sustainable society. In this context emerged the grassroots movement Generation B, which is committed to inspiring employees to engage, commit, and pursue their thoughts and passions. They bring a fresh and inspiring energy in shaping sustainability and diversity in Bühler and are an example for many other companies.

On Sunday, we had a brainstorming session led by Matt Lashmar, Managing Director of MassChallenge Switzerland. We discussed what a sustainable startup is and how accelerators like MassChallenge can help build such startups. The workgroups converged on a three-pillar definition of sustainable startup: purpose-driven to improve people's lives, climate positive or neutral, and financially self-sustaining. Participants also recommended that MassChallenge support and coach entrepreneurs in setting and achieving sustainable goals for their startups, which are not necessarily defined from the very beginning of the venture and requires careful balancing between available resources and commitment.

On Saturday we met Alexandra Pastollnigg, Founder of FairVoyage, a travel company promoting sustainable overseas destinations. We discussed if and how overseas tourism can be sustainable. Although much of the industry footprint comes from air travels, travel agencies can positively impact local communities and landscapes by promoting labour rights among their suppliers, offering financial support to conservation initiatives and by promoting cultural exchange. The main takeaway was a provocative stance: overseas tourism can only be sustainable as a luxury good. During the rest of the event we moved to Arosa and worked closely with Lidia Alder, Sustainability Project Manager of ArosaTourismus, to design sustainability tools that could actually be implemented on site. The four working groups converged independently on the one idea: the key to making Arosa a more sustainable tourism destination is to educate and empower tourists to behave more sustainably. In the eyes of the delegates, the best tool to achieve this goal appeared to be an app assigning a sustainability score to activities, menus and hotel services, and rewarding more sustainable tourists with a higher sustainability score.

Over the next years the event is going to be replicated on a larger scale. Generation B aims to expand its work beyond Bühler to keep connecting and inspiring young leaders outside the company. More importantly, the energy shown by the young people of Generation B inspires us to do more and take more decisive action for long-term sustainability.

Federico Cammelli holds a PhD in Economics and is a postdoctoral researcher in the Environmental Policy Lab at ETH Zurich since September 2019. He is interested in understanding the drivers of deforestation, degradation and fires in the tropics, with a focus on the Brazilian Amazon and West Africa. His current work aims to assess the impact of private sustainability initiatives on deforestation and degradation in Brazil and Ghana.

Stefano Mintchev is Assistant Professor of Environmental Robotics at ETH Zurich since April 2020. He received his Ph.D. degree in biorobotics followed by postdoc in aerial robotics at EPFL. In 2017 he co-founded and contributed to the development of the start-up Foldaway Haptics, where he served as CTO until March 2020. In the Environmental Robotics Lab, he is developing robotic methods for environmental monitoring and sustainable agriculture.