Q&A: Noel Anderson, CSO at American Red Cross
Humanitarian work obviously hits the ‘S’ in ESG - but what about the ‘E’?
Transportation, logistics and even waste from supplies like blood bags can have a negative impact on the environment.
Noel Anderson is Chief Sustainability Officer at the American Red Cross, a nonprofit humanitarian organisation that provides disaster relief, disaster preparedness education and emergency assistance.
If you think about the mission for the American Red Cross, we are on the front lines addressing the climate crisis and seeing those that are impacted
The organisation, founded in 1881, says it responds to an emergency every eight minutes.
In 2021, the American Red Cross started to integrate ESG into its strategy and operations and is the first humanitarian nonprofit to publish an ESG report.
Noel won the Lifetime of Achievement in Sustainability Award at the Global Sustainability and ESG Awards 2024 for his dedication to sustainability and humanitarian work.
He also gave a fireside chat on ‘Building the Foundation for Our Sustainable Future’ at Sustainability LIVE London 2024 on the 11th of September where he explored building the foundational leadership, technology and workforce infrastructure that companies need to become more sustainable.
Sustainability Magazine spoke to Noel when he got off the stage.
What inspired you to get involved in sustainability?
If you think about the mission for the American Red Cross, we are on the front lines addressing the climate crisis and seeing those that are impacted.
I'm personally seeing people who are impacted by the climate crisis and it's pretty motivating, pretty inspiring to make sure that we're not adding to the climate-caused disasters that are out there.
It's a pretty easy motivation and inspiration for us as we get to see firsthand what the impacts are doing.
Are you leveraging any sustainability trends or innovations?
We are. We're always trying to find ways to be innovative and creative and some of those work, some don't, but we know that we need to do that to be able to be successful.
What's been your biggest takeaway or highlight from Sustainability LIVE London 2024?
Just the excitement and energy coming from everybody here.
This isn't something that we're going to be able to solve just by the American Red Cross or just by one company or one industry. It's got to be everybody all in, all hands on deck.
It's exciting to come to a conference like this and see this many people in-person and online who are engaged and excited and are part of the solution.
There's lots of things that we've gained from other organisations, other companies, and the more we can get together, the more we can work with others and hear what they're doing.
It's just going to make us stronger and us better at our journey trying to reduce our environmental footprint.
How do you feel like your sustainability practices are going to evolve over the next five years?
Five years sounds like such a long time, but with all the innovation, all the changes going on in this space it's really not that long.
For us, we've got some pretty concrete planes in place to reduce our carbon or waste and our water and I hope to kind of finish those out over the next couple of years.
That gives us the opportunity to really go into maybe harder sectors for us to be able to try to make some inroads and some spaces that we haven't been able to address to date.
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