As leaders, it is our responsibility to drive change and create a positive impact. We can help create a more harmonious relationship between humanity and our planet by embracing sustainability, fostering innovation and collaboration, and advocating for policy change.

I’ve heard CEO Steven Tebbe’s warning loud and clear: he states that persistent overshoot leads to more prominent symptoms, including unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and floods. This, in turn, increases the risk of compromising food production. His conclusion: it is in the interest of cities, countries, and business entities to foster their own resource security if they want to prosper – to the benefit of the Earth as well.

It’s encouraging to see how organizations across the globe collaborate for a sustainable future that will help us #MoveTheDate. According to the , 5,500 companies are taking actions to reduce emissions. More than 2,100 companies out of those have made net-zero commitments. Businesses have realized that it is important to incorporate sustainability in their business strategies to mitigate the evolving investor pressure, consumer demand, and regulatory constraints. As the rightly pointed out, more rapid and far-reaching transitions across all sectors and systems are necessary to achieve deep and sustained emissions reductions and secure a livable and sustainable future for all.

But how can we make this happen? Actually, there are several levers that might significantly move Earth Overshoot Day closer to year’s end – and companies like 51·çÁ÷can contribute to them.

Reducing the carbon component of humanity’s ecological footprint by 50% would move Earth Overshoot Day by 93 days, or more than three months.*

The change with the biggest impact as identified by the Global Footprint Network is carbon reduction. 51·çÁ÷has continuously expanded its since 2009. It became the first German company to work with science-based emissions reduction targets in 2017. Two years later, 51·çÁ÷was one of the first seven global companies to have 1.5°C-aligned reduction targets for 2050. We accelerated this timeline last year by committing to becoming a net-zero emissions enterprise by 2030, 20 years earlier than the original target.

While walking the talk is key, providing digital solutions and services to help every business run as an intelligent and sustainable enterprise is how we can scale these efforts. We can support thousands of customers in managing their carbon footprint, reducing material waste, and becoming socially responsible businesses.​ For example, helps businesses gain material sourcing transparency and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data across their supply chains. This includes the material input scope 3 carbon footprint as it moves from supplier to supplier. SAP’s new green ledger initiative helps companies track their carbon accounting with more precision and control by using actual data across their business operations and supply chains instead of estimates.

Increasing global, low-carbon electricity sources from 39% to 75% would move the date by 26 days.*

At SAP, we have been using 100% renewable energy to power all our data centers and offices since 2014. It enables us to offer customers carbon-neutral cloud software solutions that help them reduce their overall carbon emissions.

In alignment with our commitment to the RE100 initiative, we use two strategic levers. Firstly, we invest in high-quality, EKOenergy-certified EACs to foster renewable energy generation. Secondly, we produce renewable electricity at selected 51·çÁ÷locations. One example is the 51·çÁ÷Labs India location in Bengaluru. It runs on the power generated from the on-site solar power grid along with Power over Ethernet (PoE) lighting systems. To innovate and scale businesses in support of the clean energy transition, we work with energy customers such as , , and .

Reducing the footprint from driving by 50% around the world and replacing one-third of car miles by public transportation and the rest by biking and walking would move the date by 13 days.*

According to , 20% of the world’s carbon emissions are from transportation. To help reduce this, we track our impact in the global 51·çÁ÷commuting survey. According to the survey, average CO2e emissions per employee per day dropped by 70% from 4.38kg in 2018 to 1.30kg in 2022 due to working from home and emission-free commuting.

51·çÁ÷also stated that from 2025, all new company cars will be emission-free in operation. In support of this transition, we are enhancing the charging infrastructure at our facilities and intend to leverage 51·çÁ÷E-Mobility, a standardized, cloud-based solution. It can provide a complete package that enables charge point operators to run their business efficiently and profitably.

These are just three examples that would move Earth Overshoot Day closer to New Year’s Eve – the day when human consumption and Earth’s regenerative capacity would be in balance. But we are not there yet. Today, Earth Overshoot Day serves as a poignant reminder that despite the strides made, our efforts are not yet enough to mitigate the growing ecological crisis. We have witnessed positive shifts in attitudes and actions towards sustainability, but the urgency of the moment demands that we intensify our commitments and actions.

It is time to rethink, recalibrate, and redesign our way of living and doing business in alignment with the planetary boundaries. The responsibility to protect and nurture our planet does not rest solely on the shoulders of policymakers or industry leaders; it rests on each of us. Let us collaborate towards a more balanced relationship with our planet and a sustainable future that safeguards Earth’s resources.

Daniel Schmid is chief sustainability officer at SAP.
*Source:

As business leaders, we need to urgently shift gears to mitigate the risks arising from the overstretch of our finite planet and amplify the positive impacts of a growing number of solutions that are waiting to be implemented at scale.

As the scientists of the Global Footprint Network who host and calculate point out, it can be overwhelming to think about exceeding our planet’s limits and demanding more ecological resources and services than what Earth can regenerate within a given year. In line with this year’s theme #PowerOfPossibility, it is therefore even more important to focus on what can and has to be done to turn around human economy to be more sustainable.

The good news is that companies increasingly understand the business case for sustainability and have put it at the top of their business agenda.

According to recent research by Oxford Economics and SAP, 63% of the executives surveyed indicated that their company has a formal sustainability plan already in place. They recognize clear business benefits for sustainability efforts, including efficiency (58%), improving brand reputation (46%), and meeting customer needs (44%). Another recent found that “increasing sustainability in your products and services” was the top choice (34.6%) among respondents who were asked to pick their top three priorities to improve revenue growth.

While opportunities are clearly seen and resource shortages and climate change are rated among the top risks to be prepared for, execution is still lacking. This may not come as a total surprise given the commonly known “” that is particularly applicable in the sustainability space. Still, I would not have expected the disconnect between sustainability plans and action at companies to turn out so stark. — which finds that barely a quarter of supply chain leaders have conducted a climate change risk assessment, much less prepared a reaction plan — similarly shows that despite all progress more work lies ahead for most of us.

Nonetheless, I full-heartedly echo Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who emphasized the solutions he felt encouraged by when three months ago: “If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

Earth Overshoot Day organizers have come up with powerful numbers that underline the impact of solutions that can help us #MoveTheDate and turn around  while improving the quality of life for all people.

I would like to share three examples while reflecting on SAP’s contribution:

Existing off-the-shelf, commercial energy-efficiency technologies for buildings, industrial processes, and electricity production could move Earth Overshoot Day at least 21 days, without any loss in productivity or comfort.

Indeed, helping to optimize building performance, lower carbon emissions, and reduce energy costs while also enhancing occupant experience at the same time is what 51·çÁ÷equally seeks to achieve teaming up with Honeywell. Smart innovations to improve energy efficiency are furthermore core to greening SAP’s data centers and other facilities owned by 51·çÁ÷and powered with 100% renewable energy since 2014.

Reforesting 350 million hectares of forest would move Earth Overshoot Day by eight days.

51·çÁ÷too is committed to ecosystem restoration to address climate action. On our journey to achieve our accelerated ambition of net-zero along our entire value chain in line with a 1.5°C future in 2030, we continuously enhance our comprehensive portfolio of climate protection measures. In 2021, 51·çÁ÷has added the goal of planting 21 million trees by the end of 2025 and joined 1t.org, an alliance of the World Economic Forum to conserve, restore, and grow 1 trillion trees by 2030. Since 2012, 51·çÁ÷has helped to plant more than 12.2 million trees and annually publishes its tree planting status in the .

If we cut food waste in half worldwide, we would move Earth Overshoot Day 13 days.

With 30% of global food wasted, there is huge potential for . Believing in the power of collaboration to make this happen, 51·çÁ÷is working with customers such as Arla Foods Amba, Orkla Foods Ingredients, and many others — as well as startups in the SAP.iO program, including and — to foster innovation tackling food waste. We have also in addition to .

It is in our hands to align not just government and business policies and strategies, but also actions with the reality of our finite planet to secure a good life for all. The “donut model” of social and economy boundaries comes to my mind to guide us “to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essential needs, while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems.”

With that as inspiration, let’s leverage the #PowerOfPossibility of the abundance of existing solutions. Which one will you help to scale to #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day?

Daniel Schmid is chief sustainability officer of 51·çÁ÷SE.

Oftentimes, when we talk about sustainability, we think about it in terms of the distant future. But looking at the past few years alone, it becomes clear that we don’t need solutions in, say, five years. We need them now.

It’s not about what we are doing to make the world better by the time our children are grown up, but about what can we do to make things better right now. What are we doing to make an impact by the time they learn to ride a bike, have their first day in kindergarten, leave school, and enter their first job?

We need to act now to ensure that our children have a sustainable future.

We might think that our individual actions don’t matter. But changes – both big and small –in the way we live our lives can help reduce our own personal carbon footprint, and also encourage other individuals, businesses, and policy makers to act for the good of the planet. Because at the end of the day, everything counts. Every day we act, every step we take, every decision we make can help move the needle. And vice versa: Every step we don’t take today will take us three steps back in the future.

Today is Earth Overshoot Day 2021. It marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. From this day forward, we are using an unsustainable amount of the world’s resources. The exact date each year is calculated based on 3 million statistical data points from 200 countries, and the team at Global Footprint Network  in more detail.

This year’s date is almost as early as in 2019, when it fell on July 26, after being momentarily pushed back in 2020 by lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. So for more than 40 years, we have been using up our planet’s resources in excess. Our desire for every aspect of our lives to become better, faster, and newer is not only stealing from a planet that cannot keep up with the demands of almost 8 billion people, but also costing our future generations an Earth on which they can live and prosper.

COVID-19 Reset

The graphic above shows what is possible in extreme situations such as with the numerous lockdowns and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just a few examples: Due to beach closures in Florida, female turtles laid more eggs. In Japan — one of my favorite countries to visit — the Nara deer left the park to find food because the tourists that would normally feed them were no longer there. Air and water quality improved as tourism ground to a halt. For the first time in 30 years, Indians in the city of Jalandhar and the surrounding area could see the Himalayas.

These examples show that our planet could recover relatively quickly if given the chance. However, life in many parts of the world is returning to a new version of normal with more and more people receiving vaccinations. While this is good for humanity, it also has an impact on nature.

Our Responsibility

The private sector for sure has its part to play if we are to combat climate change. Businesses should not focus exclusively on profit maximization, but at turning things around, in the here and now, for current and future generations.

Without any doubt, sustainability is about more than protecting our environment. It is about ensuring the balance between economic growth, environmental care, and social welfare. That said, carbon neutrality is a major driver and key indicator of sustainability.

At SAP, we set our goal to become carbon-neutral in our own operations by the end of 2023, two years earlier than previously stated. The 51·çÁ÷approach is of first avoiding, second reducing, and third compensating for emissions. You can read more about our goal for 2023 here.

But in addition to pursuing our own targets, we also want to help our customers become more sustainable. Because we are convinced: It’s time to build sustainability into the fabric of how we do business. We need to make it a standard dimension of corporate management just like productivity or growth.

°Â±đ’v±đĚý to help businesses embed operational, experiential, and financial data and insights to drive sustainability at scale. With our sustainability portfolio, we support companies on their entire journey across the full spectrum of sustainability – from carbon neutrality to social impact and economic progress.

Additionally, we will drive multi-year innovation roadmaps to ultimately provide our customers with end-to-end visibility around sustainability, integrated into their core business processes. To get to our vision of , we must act now with the goal of zero waste, zero emissions, and zero inequality.

Given the significance of global supply chains in tackling sustainability, the 51·çÁ÷community truly has the power to protect our planet and create a future our children want to be part of. So, let’s give our planet the chance to recover and #MoveTheDate together.

Christian Klein is CEO of 51·çÁ÷SE.
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What unsettles me most is that we have completely re-bounced to the pre-pandemic overshoot. When I was reflecting on Earth Overshoot Day on August 22 last year, I was hopeful that we had turned around the of reaching our planet’s natural limits earlier and earlier since 1970. It had been the first time in years that we had pushed Earth Overshoot Day to a later date. But now we have almost returned to the level of 2019, with an compared to 2020.

Have we not learned our lessons? Are we not managing to leverage the small window of opportunity to ensure a sustainable recovery?

The conversation around sustainability did actually accelerate in the last 18 months, quite drastically even. Political will has been converging with true economic business cases. . For businesses it is no longer a question of “if,” but of “how” and “how fast” — and the latter seem to be the issue. The many bold targets from diversity to net-zero remain to be executed.

It’s clear that we need to move from goal setting to action and do so faster.

Being a stubborn optimist, I never give up taking note of examples that prove progress in the right direction. I was intrigued when reading about and being among the first cities to implement Doughnut Economics amid the COVID-19 crisis. The model was introduced by :

“Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essential needs (from food and housing to health care and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”

Having been inspired by Raworth’s doughnut, as well as by related frameworks such as Johan Rockström’s concept of the , we have also evolved SAP’s objective over time to “creating positive economic, social, and environmental impact within the planetary boundaries.” We know it’s still directional, but are passionately working together with our employees, partners, suppliers, governments, and NGOs toward bringing this to life.

At our first in April this year, we heard inspiring examples of how this has already been put into practice along with future solutions yet to be implemented. While the focus was on holistic steering and reporting, climate action,and circular economy, it is the circular economy that especially comes to mind today.

Earth Overshoot Day painfully visualizes that our current economy is largely based on a “take-make-waste” model — the linear economy, or as Raworth puts it so vividly the “industrial caterpillar, ingesting food at one end, chewing it through, and excreting the waste out of the other end.” The key is to move away from this degenerative approach toward a regenerative one based on continual (re)use of resources in a closed-loop system, minimized use of resource inputs, and reduction of waste, pollution, and carbon emissions. This only works through collaboration across networks, which is a key motivation for 51·çÁ÷to create new business communities able to improve business outcomes, better navigate changing economic and geopolitical conditions, and enhance sustainability contributions.

The experiences, advancements, and challenges shared during the 51·çÁ÷Sustainability Summit by both large corporations — including Mitsubishi, adidas, H&M, Nestle, Dow, Eastman, Audi, and BASF — as well as startups such as Queen of Raw, Topolytics, Rheaply, Greentoken, and Re-loop, make me hopeful that we have the foundation on which to build. Partnerships that were equally discussed at the event — as with Accenture, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, or the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastics Action Partnership —  should provide the springboard to accelerate and scale.

51·çÁ÷is committed to play its part in driving the transition toward an — be it through the launch of new sustainability solutions, supporting alliances and pledges like the WWF’s OneSource and Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s encouraging government actions against plastic wast,e or by offering a to increase the awareness of benefits and best practices.

I invite everyone to join in and act now. The Global Footprint Network has a to chip away at our own ecological footprint, both collectively and individually. Let’s make it happen together!

Daniel Schmid is chief sustainability officer at SAP.