Q&A: AWorld's Gaia Arzilli on Scope 3 Hope and Work With UN
Gaia Arzilli is the International Director at AWorld where she takes care of the positioning and the growth of the company abroad.
AWorld is headquartered in Turin, Italy, and it have been on a major expansion mission over the last four and a half years. The company signs up over 100 corporate clients around the world, and Gaia's role encompasses anything that is beyond the Italian borders with regards to growth and strategy.
She shares her expertise with Sustainability Magazine.
Can you tell us about AWorld's founding mission? What are you trying to achieve?
At AWorld, our mission is to help organisations empower the stakeholders to take action on climate change. We help companies engage either their employees and or their customers so that they can become active participants within the net zero and sustainability agenda.
How does that happen in terms of the work you do with companies?
We have developed a digital platform that can be delivered in the form of an app or an API or web view integrable tool within third party platforms.
For example, we work with a variety of supermarket chains that wish to: engage with their consumers and customers to make sure that they are educated on what sustainability and a sustainable lifestyle is; diversify from their competitors so that they can reward their customers anytime they take a positive action for the planet.
This will help them not just to diversify, but to ensure that they can really provide loyalty points and discount codes to their consumers and customers and keep them loyal to the brand.
How has AWorld has been working closely with the United Nations and with the European Union?
We are in an incredibly fortunate position to have been selected by the United Nations to drive ActNow, which is the worldwide campaign that realises the importance of individuals acting on climate change.
Since joining forces with the UN, we have aggregated over 23.5 million positive actions worldwide. So the entirety of the ActNow campaign is run on our platform. New York is also worth mentioning, as we are coming to the end of a long-lasting campaign. Within the ActNow campaign, they will see us aggregate two million positive actions for our common future following through from the United Nations Summit of the Future here in New York.
Similarly, we were fortunate to be appointed by the European Union to drive the Climate Pact Initiative, a similar initiative to the UN ActNow campaign that requires a platform like AWorld’s to educate, measure and engage Europeans on this very important topic.
What kind of trends are you seeing in the sustainability sphere? What are people talking about?
For over a decade we have approached smart, sustainable cities from the point of view of technological advancement. Fortunately enough, I am seeing a shift within the sustainability agenda and debate that now focuses on people. We now understand that digital tools are fundamental to become more sustainable, but if we don't bring every single actor and every single stakeholder along this pathway, we're just not going to make those goals and requirements that we need to do in order to become more sustainable and less impactful on the planet.
So how the sustainability agenda has moved in the last two to three years is really an uber-personalisation of sustainability and ESG around the individual. This does not take away, however, the need for systematic changes – but the two conversations are now walking hand-in-hand.
Are people and companies working harder on Scope 3?
As an optimist, Scope 3 has become definitely at the forefront of the sustainability agenda of a lot of companies. However, because Scope 3 is definitely the hardest one to calculate, we are still seeing a little bit of a grey area in how companies are reporting on it.
Fortunately, we are moving at such a pace that I truly believe (and also thanks to being in Europe through the development of the CSRD) we are seeing this part of the reporting being embedded now within the real fabric of each company. So it's no longer something that can be done as a pleasant activity or something that maybe you are going to communicate this side of your business. But really the difference is going to be ‘do you want to diversify from the competition?’ And the biggest question is ‘do you want to still be here in 10 years time?’
Through our platform, we are able to really create that community and help companies bring all of their stakeholders along their sustainability, net zero and ESG journey. So it's no longer a topic that is approached exclusively behind closed doors at a leadership meeting or by the ESG department, but it's really something that will involve every single person within the company. And if you have a tool that can enable you to educate and create a community of doers, it doesn't just benefit your environmental reporting: it improves your company with talent retention and acquisition, with caring about your brand and with making sure that your customers are loyal to you.
Gaia is speaking at Sustainability LIVE Malta on 20 February 2025. Get your tickets here.
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