Canva has a strong heritage of supporting sustainability. Its Australian operations were certified as carbon neutral last year, and Canva has set a goal for its entire global operations to be climate positive by 2023. Renewable energy powers the company’s head office, and its global operations and data services are set to follow suit by 2024.
In 2019 Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism to give organisations a way to join forces to address climate change. Since then, more than 200 organisations have joined us globally in our commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
Rianne van Veldhuizen, Managing Director of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Australia and New Zealand has welcomed Canva to The Climate Pledge, saying, “We are excited that Canva is AWS’s first customer in Australia to join The Climate Pledge, and we look forward to working with them to help achieve their sustainability goals.
“Amazon is committed to building a sustainable business for our customers and the planet – solving the world’s environmental and sustainability challenges is a task that no single organisation can take on alone, but working together, we hope to make a significant impact.”
Canva’s Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Cameron Adams, says the decision followed recent discussions within Canva about how it could further contribute to global sustainability efforts.
“It’s important to us because we are all human, we all need to live on this planet, and we want to ensure its survival,” Adams says. “Canva is always looking at how our actions impact the climate, and how we can inspire others to take action as well.”
“One of our values is to be a force for good, which expresses the desire for us as an organisation to leave the world in a better state than when we found it. And we believe that taking climate action is one of the most important ways we can do that.”
Canva has a strong heritage of supporting sustainability. Its Australian operations were certified as carbon neutral last year, and Canva has set a goal for its entire global operations to be climate positive by 2023. Renewable energy powers the company’s head office, and its global operations and data services are set to follow suit by 2024.
“The 2040 target of The Climate Pledge is one that we are really happy to be a part of,” Adams says. “It has inspired us to make our goals public and figure out how we are going to hit them.”
With a team of more than 2,000 employees globally, and 60 million people using its products, Adams recognises that Canva is very aware of the importance of showing leadership in sustainability initiatives.
“It’s a new world for companies to be operating in, ethically and sustainably,” Adams says. “A big part of our brand promise to our customers is to be the company that is thinking about environmental, economic, and social impacts of what Canva is and what we offer.”
Canva’s sustainability initiatives are interwoven throughout its operations, down to the sourcing of organic and local ingredients for the food it supplies to its team. The company chooses to work with suppliers that embrace environmentally friendly manufacturing processes, and plants one tree for every print order it receives.
“We planted close to three million trees in 2021 alone through that program,” Adams says.
Other signatories to The Climate Pledge include Procter & Gamble, HP, and Salesforce. Combined, Pledge signatories generate over US$1.8 trillion in global annual revenues, and have more than seven million employees across 26 industries in 21 countries. Together they are expected to collectively mitigate 1.98 billion metric tons (BMT) of carbon emissions from a 2020 baseline, which is equivalent to 5.4% of current global annual emissions.
At Amazon we are on a path to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of our original target of 2030. In Australia we have invested in three renewable energy projects - solar farms in both Gunnedah and Suntop, New South Wales, and a windfarm in Hawksdale, Victoria. When completed, these projects will collectively generate 717,000 MWh annually, which is enough electricity to power 115,000 average Australian homes each year.
We are also focused on improving efficiency in every aspect of the AWS Cloud, from the power and cooling infrastructure at our data centres down to the high-performance microprocessors within our servers.
Additionally, we are committed to helping our customers reduce their carbon footprints by moving workloads to the cloud. In July of this year, AWS released a report with 451 Research, which found that organisations in APAC could reduce their carbon emissions by 78% if they move from on-premises data centres to cloud infrastructure.
Innovations such as these, and the support we gain from our partners such as Canva, give us good reason to be optimistic about the future. There is more to be done to meet the challenge of climate change, but with passion, collaboration, and innovation, we can build a more sustainable business for our employees, customers, and communities.
You can learn more about Canva and The Climate Pledge from Cameron here
