Mark Newton, head of corporate sustainability for Samsung Electronics North America, discusses with Green Builder Media's Sara Gutterman how Samsung builds ESG into business decisions through product energy efficiency, renewable power, circular design, and e-waste recycling.
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Sara Gutterman: I'm joined today by Mark Newton, head of corporate sustainability for Samsung Electronics in North America. Tell me about the evolution of your sustainability strategy over the years.
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Mark Newton: So this idea of considering externalities and bringing those impacts into the decision making process is really what I consider to be the way to think about sustainability. Because if you think about it. We're not making good decisions. If we don't bring in some of these things that aren't monetized on the balance sheet. And so by doing that, you know, we're able to consider things like social impacts, environmental impacts and put that into our business plan.
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Mark Newton: And if we do that, not thinking about it as a siloed activity, but more as an integrated thinking process, we're going to be in business longer. And that's another way to think of sustainability, right? We really also see this as an opportunity really as green as a lens for innovation. And and so that's a big part of what drives us too, as we're continuing to think about new ways to help our customers experience their lives in more connected ways.
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Mark Newton: We are always thinking also about like how we can help them with their sustainability journey through the development of our products.
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Sara Gutterman: Can you talk a little bit more specifically, specifically about Samsung's ESG initiatives and particular efforts that you're most excited about?
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Mark Newton: The big priorities for us are around addressing climate change, and way we do that really is, you know, driving efficiency through all of our operations, considering our direct emissions as well as our indirect impacts. And a big way that we can do this is by shifting to renewables in our in the way that we're powering our company and really focusing on the efficiency of our products.
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Mark Newton: I mean, we're a company that makes energy using products, right? So there are a lot of companies that are out there that don't. And we see this as an opportunity because these are impacts that our customers have, and we have an opportunity to help them with their goals by driving efficiency across our product portfolio. So that's a big part.
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Mark Newton: On the circular economy piece. You know, frankly, if you look at our roadmaps and we go out into the future, especially for mobile products where we're very dependent on, you know, batteries and other sorts of things, there are critical materials that we just simply, you know, can't achieve our roadmap with unless we're thinking about this more strategically. It's it's easy to go find, you know, where this stuff is in the ground.
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Mark Newton: But once you dig it out of the ground and you put it into products and you spread it all over the world, getting it back is a significant problem, right? And so even even though there are certainly net benefits to recycling the logistics and some of the other things that are associated with that are really challenging. So that's something we think really deeply about.
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Mark Newton: And and not just end of pipe either. You know, more and more repair and reuse this really important. And we've also introduced some ideas like upcycling and then the on the you know, side really it's around empowering the next generation. As I said we have some key programs there solve for tomorrow, which is a global program which is education focused, particularly for Stem.
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Mark Newton: The idea is to engage young people and help provide them with the tools to use Stem and solve problems in their community. And then we have a another program which is focused on younger youth called Climate Superstars. It's a really kind of cool, fun, gamified way to engage kids in in environmental literacy. Help them prevent them again with the concepts and the confidence to to tackle some of these issues.
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Mark Newton: And, you know, and then from a governance standpoint, board accountability is key. And so last year we we formed a board committee focused just on sustainability with all independent directors is to help our business leaders see how sustainability ESG can be integrated into their business plans to help them succeed, help their goals move forward.
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Sara Gutterman: Can you talk a little bit more specifically about what Samsung is doing to address that embodied carbon.
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Mark Newton: Obviously, in the way that we run our operations? That's that's key. As you said, you know, there's these impacts are embedded not just in the way the product presents itself to the customer, but also in the way that product is created. So our, you know, our first priority is to run our operations as efficiently as possible. All of our manufacturing is ISO 50,001 certified globally.
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Mark Newton: But, you know, the biggest focus for us, we're we're manufacturing company. It's it's the products themselves. It's the energy efficiency of our products. Over the last ten years, we've been able to help our customers save as much as 350 million metric tons of CO2 emissions through the efficiency improvements of our products over the last ten years. 100% of our of our notebooks, air purifiers, front load washers, dishwashers, our Energy Star certified on water stewardship.
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Mark Newton: Another really key area we are rated by CDP with an A rating for water stewardship around water stewardship. Besides what we're doing in our operations, there's some really cool stuff happening in terms of our product design. We've been we've been focused on trying to address the issue of ocean pollution and and incorporating ocean plastics back into our products.
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Mark Newton: On the carbon side, you know, emission reduction is is key. Last year alone, we through our efficiency or rather through our abatement activities and some efficiency activities, we're able to avoid 6.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in our operations. But but you know, also, renewable energy is key. We use a lot of electricity in our operations, 100% of all of our operations in the US, Europe and China are powered by renewable energy.
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Mark Newton: And then waste is the other big impact area here in the United States alone, where recycling over 100 million pounds of e-waste every year, we've recycled over 1 billion pounds in the last ten years, and that's only about 10% of what we do globally. And, you know, we see this as not only something that's important to our customers, but also integral to our circularity strategy.
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Sara Gutterman: Are you using any specific tools or software or calculators to measure your. And are you following any specific national or international reporting guidelines?
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Mark Newton: So we do use some third party tools, but generally speaking, most of the control mechanisms that we have we've developed for ourselves and we continue to refine. However, we think transparency is really important. And so reporting is something that we that we do. And also engaging with stakeholders and issue advocates. We see them as a resource. So we've just published just a month ago what I call our US Environmental Toolkit.
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Mark Newton: It's focused primarily for the US audience. And you know, we know what's important here. We do. We do. You know, we're we're crazy focused on consumer insights to to calibrate our business constantly. And so we know what what the you know, our different demographic age groups and others want from us. And so we're focused on those key priorities.
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Mark Newton: And so we're going to have some more announcements later this year that that codify our commitments around circularity and climate. And renewable energy will be part of that.