On March 22, AmCham members and partners gathered at the Konrad Restaurant, Palace Hotel Tallinn, for the Sustainability Power Breakfast devoted to “Environmental Footprint”. The event was co-hosted by AmCham Estonia, Cobalt and Coca-Cola HBC and organized by the AmCham Sustainability & ESG Working Group (Darja Saar, Mervet Kägu, Daria Sivovol).
Climate change is one of the most complex and burning topics faced by the world today. As part of the climate change topic, we have several contributors/ pillars such as GHG emissions, availability, and quality of water resources, packaging and its circularity, renewable fuels, and energy.
These topics raise a lot of questions: how big is my impact? How can I measure and monitor this? What are the most relevant measures/ actions I can take?
The morning discussion was held in a hybrid format and featured the following speakers:
- Hele Talur, the Head of Environment in Coca-Cola HBC who shared the insights on how to create and proceed with comprehensive environmental footprint reduction strategies whether you are a small business in Estonia or a global company.
- Siim Vahtrus, Senior Associate at law firm COBALT who later shared his knowledge and experience when it comes to rules and regulations that will be soon introduced for larger and publicly listed companies, sustainability reporting, various support schemes available for companies, as well as a special handout created by COBALT that event participants and all interested members can use as a roadmap for their sustainability planning.
The event was masterfully moderated by Darja Saar, Corporate Affairs & Sustainability manager at Coca-Cola HBC Estonia.
The morning session concluded with a very active Q&A session with Megan Riley chosen for the “Best question of the morning” prize.
Environmental Footprint, Sustainability, ESG – these are the topics of high priority for many businesses around the world not because it is fancy, but because there is no other option anymore!
“75% of Estonian enterprises are small or medium size, so it is understandable they may face challenges to have the resources and teams with the required capabilities to assess their organizations’ environmental footprint and create respective mitigation plans. This is where collaboration and partnering come to play.
Associations play a crucial role in facilitating cooperation between different industries and SMEs to overcome these obstacles, learn from each other, share each other best practices, develop tools, and approaches that are common to all, and help to drive their sustainability agenda. The same is valid for international global corporations – acting together with their stakeholders, contractors, other induction members, and the academy, we work together to develop new solutions and enhance the others in action already, to achieve our sustainability goals and targets.”- stated Hele Talur from Coca-Cola HBC.
“In Europe, the requirements on measuring and reporting on environmental footprint are developing at a breakneck speed. However, the same can luckily be said about the tools and guidance available to companies that wish to provide greater transparency about their environmental impact and aim to reduce it.” – says Siim Vahtrus from Cobalt.
AmCham Estonia Sustainability & ESG working group is committed to continuing its work around those topics and invites all interested chamber members to join in.
We sincerely thank Darja Saar and Coca-Cola HBC for their leadership and support of the event. We would also like to extend our deepest gratitude to our speakers – Hele Talur and Siim Vahtrus.