In 2020–2021, several laws were adopted in Russia and several projects were launched at the federal level to support the green agenda in the development of the economy and energy. However, since the beginning of March, some of them have been put on pause in order to reduce the burden on entrepreneurs. At the same time, at SPIEF 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko spoke about separate waste collection and the rejection of plastic disposable packaging, which means that the environmental agenda has not been completely forgotten. Participants of the Fontanka round table discussed what is currently happening with the legislative framework and in practice in areas related to ecology.
“Nothing has changed for us, we have been developing as part of the ESG agenda, and we continue,” says Irina Kiuru, Director of Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Lindström. — In April, we launched a project for employees to recycle and reuse personal textiles together with the Skolkovo project. Many of our KPIs in the company are tied to the environment – to reduce the carbon footprint and, first of all, to reduce the consumption of resources: water, electricity, chemicals that we use – a decrease in recent years has amounted to 30-50%. Of course, now ecology is not the main issue in negotiations with potential clients, but if companies reorient themselves from western markets to eastern ones, then the topic of ecology is quite relevant for them.
According to her, the desire to reduce all environmental costs in order to survive the crisis is the first, often ill-considered reaction, since investments in environmental initiatives will bring benefits in the future. “But we see rhetoric at the highest level that we will not deviate from the ESG, we will not withdraw from the Paris Convention, and all federal programs continue,” said Irina Kiuru . “And it seems to me that no matter how the requirements from the authorities are reduced, the mission of the companies is so that the process does not stop.”
Ecology, for example, can become a new direction in business activities. According to Nikolai Voronkov, head of landscape gardening at Pro Cleaning LLC, the company is engaged in professional cleaning of residential areas – cleaning territories and premises.
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