Our sustainability vision: Improve to sustain tomorrow

The world faces complex issues such as poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, climate change, and inadequate access to education and healthcare. The United Nations introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a response to the need for a comprehensive, collaborative, and sustainable approach to these global challenges. By promoting social, economic, and environmental progress, the SDGs strive to create a world where no one is left behind, and our planet thrives for generations to come.

To do our bit in these challenges in a structured and continuous manner, Bright Cape’s Sustainability Committee introduced the Sustainability Vision in 2022.

The essence of our vision can be defined as the following four pillars:

Responsible resources

Worldwide consumption rests on the use of the natural environment and resources in a way that continues to have destructive impacts on the planet. Should the global population reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles.

By responsibly using the products and services we need to deliver our services and perform our work, we can minimize our upstream environmental impact and footprint.

We focus on two main objectives:

Reducing waste and encouraging circularity to minimize our environmental impact.
Reducing emissions to lower our carbon footprint.

Healthy people

In 2020, 1.2 million Dutch employees, about 16% of the working population, experience burn-out symptoms. Its lesser-known cousin 'bore-out' is a phenomenon that's arguably just as pernicious as it increases the likelihood of stress symptoms, depression, and anxiety. As our people are the driving force behind Bright Cape, maintaining and improving the company culture such that every employee feels happy, safe, satisfied and challenged at work is vital for our continuous success. We want all our employees to live their best life and stimulate them to be physically and mentally healthy.

We focus on two main objectives:

Stimulating our employees to improve their physical and mental health.
Boost employee engagement and personal growth, also outside of Bright Cape.

Sustainable solutions

Failing to put the global economy on a path to net zero poses an existential thread to humanity. The largest impact we can have on the environment is through the sustainability efforts of our clients. It is our mission to implement environmental impact as a core component of all services and solutions we provide and challenge our clients to transition from driving profits based on efficiency towards profits based on sustainability efforts.

We focus on two main objectives:

Sustainability is a core value within our commercial proposition.
Engaging in sustainability-driven projects and solutions.

Interested to see how already incorporate this in recent projects; have a look at our sustainable reference cases.

Prosperous society

Despite being one of the richest countries in the world (Netherlands' per capita income of USD 51,340 is the ninth highest among OECD countries), prosperity in the Netherlands is not equally shared. In the Dutch context, socio-economic inequalities do exist and will become even sharper in the coming years. At Bright Cape we feel responsible to share the value we are creating with others and use it for good causes. By engaging with local initiatives and collaborating with organizations, we can contribute to the well-being of society and improve the livability of local communities.

We focus on two main objectives:

Using the skills of our people to support social organizations in digital and data related challenges.
Engage in activities and supporting organizations that serve a good cause with the help of the Bright Cape Foundation.

Two ways in which we have made sure these objectives are being put into practice are by joining forces with Brainport Voor Elkaar and by creating our own Bright Cape Foundation.

Empowering social resilience in collaboration with Brainport voor Elkaar

Recently we joined forces with Brainport voor Elkaar to foster data innovation in the social domain. Brainport voor Elkaar strives to include everyone in the success of the Brainport region, also the less fortune ones. We joined their partner network, with which they aim to connect social organizations to companies to work together on challenges in the area.

To kick start this cooperation Brainport voor Elkaar connected us to Lumens, a social organization that fosters social resilience for those who cannot take this for granted. We are going to help them to identify and quantify their contribution to social resilience within society. Curious what this exactly entails? Read this blog.

Bright Cape Foundation: our commitment to global fairness and employee well-being

Over the past year, Bright Cape has integrated a sustainability vision into our business operations. While our efforts have focused on enhancing processes and stimulating our clients to operate more sustainably, we recognize the critical importance of addressing the human aspect of sustainability as well. Since Bright Cape’s success is intertwined with our employees’ well-being, we try to ensure that our employees are mentally, physically, and socially happy. We do this, for example, by providing tools to create a good work-life balance, healthy food, fun team activities, mental awareness sessions and an extensive training curriculum.

However, we acknowledge not everyone on this planet gets the same resources, opportunities, and attention that we do. Hence, the Bright Cape foundation focusses on contributing to non-profit organizations (NGOs) that strive for global fairness. Unfortunately, today’s society still shows a lot of inequalities when looking at satisfaction of basic needs, accessibility of qualitative health care and information, assurance of personal freedoms, and equal rights and treatment.

Over the next years, every Bright Caper will make a monthly donation to the foundation, empowering us to improve the quality of life for those in need.

Each year, we will prioritize a key theme within the realm of human sustainability, with 2024 dedicated to combatting poverty in the Netherlands. Our employees are in the lead; everyone can suggest a good cause that is close to their heart. Additionally, we will encourage and support Bright Capers in their own efforts to raise funds for a good cause, such as the participation in charity runs.

With the Bright Cape foundation, we were able to financially support these organizations in their mission to support the once most in need:

Discover some of our sustainability projects

Decreasing energy costs by implementing an optimization model for energy supply and consumption

Vereijken - a leading Dutch greenhouse horticulture player - was looking for a solution to reduce energy costs to heat and light their greenhouses. They faced challenges in balancing gas and electricity consumption costs with revenue from surplus electricity. Currently, decision-making is time-consuming and manual, lacking assurance of optimality.

To address this, an automated optimization model was developed. It considers market prices for energy supply and demand, internal energy needs, and past performance data. This model will also be used for future forecasting to optimize cogeneration unit usage efficiently.

Potential reduction of energy consumption based on data-driven predictions

Holland Malt’s production process consumes large amounts of energy. They struggle with setting optimal oven dials to reduce energy consumption.

To solve this problem, Bright Cape created a predictive model based on historical data, that predicts the duration of the drying process. In 71% of the cases, the model accurately predicted the drying time within a 30-minute range. The model allowed Holland’s Malt to substantially set oven dials based on data-driven predictions. By controlling the production process, the energy usage can be reduced, with a potential of 1% of heat saved per batch = 539 households’ yearly energy consumption.

Assessing the feasibility and the potential go-to-market for the Swinkels Circularity Index

Royal Swinkels developed the Swinkels Circularity Index for internal use and seeks to extend its use to help other companies enhance their circularity.

To support other companies becoming more circular, Swinkels has asked Bright Cape for help to identify concrete steps to extend the index. To address these challenges, we assessed the competitive landscape and existing approaches by conducting client interviews and extensive desk research. Based on our findings and recommended next steps, Swinkels is now able to position the index in the market. This allows them to enable other companies to understand circular performance and identify areas for improvement.

Decreasing production costs by improving prediction models for solar energy production

Hezelaer Energy faces challenges with their current solar power prediction model, lacking insights into predictor-solar power production relations and excluding local weather data. To address this, Bright Cape incorporated KNMI weather data sources into their model, leading to a 24% performance improvement. This enhanced model provides insights into key predictors like solar radiation, enabling Hezelaer to optimize asset management strategies and reduce production costs.

Analyzing, monitoring and modelling your transport network to reduce transportation costs and gain control

Curium was not able to flatten their growing transportation costs due to a complex transportation network with dependencies on many service providers, complex timings due to determined SLAs, high demand for dedicated transportation. With our solution, we realised a 20% cost reduction across the transportation network, increased network control and reduced their carbon footprint due to more efficient use of resources.

Curious how we can work together on your sustainable project?

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