CEO Corner: Spring and Sustainability

A time of year for celebrating nature sees the tire industry move forward to achieving United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Spring is a much-loved season for many. The days are longer and warmer, trees are greening, birds are chirping, and flowers are blooming. There is clearly a focus on our natural environment during spring so perhaps it is no coincidence that we celebrate Earth Day on April 22 and World Environment Day on June 5.

Smack-dab in the middle, on May 18, the global tire industry brought forth an exciting announcement: The World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) Tire Industry Project (TIP) launched a Roadmap toward achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Shared vision

The Roadmap aims to guide, inform, and support decision-making along the value chain, encourage stakeholder dialogue and inspire action-oriented initiatives among industry peers and beyond.

It presents a shared vision on how the tire sector can drive progress to achieve SDGs while creating business value and it clearly demonstrates how the sector interacts with SDGs and presents tangible actions that together, both individual companies and the sector can use to maximize positive impact and minimize negative effects.

The tire sector, like many others, faces several global challenges, including rapid digitalization and automation, increasing resource scarcity, accelerating climate change impacts, and rising expectations on social issues.

Working collaboratively with its global value chain, the tire sector has a vital role to play in creating a future with environmentally friendly; safe, efficient, and accessible mobility for all, while simultaneously driving progress on the UN SDGs.

It’s a fascinating, informative, and important document and I encourage you to spend some time reviewing it along with its website: https://sustainabilitydriven.info/.  If you want to learn more about what global tire producers are doing on their respective sustainability journeys, just enter the name of the tire company plus “sustainability” into your preferred search engine. By doing so, you can often find a wealth of information, right at your fingertips.

Rebirth and renewal

Last but not least, spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. To that end, The Tire and Rubber Association of Canada (TRAC), launched our redesigned website on April 30. The new site offers easier navigation, mobile-friendly features, and integrated social media platforms.

Available in both English and French, the site consolidates our “Be Tire Smart” and “Fuel Saving Tires” websites to maximize reach by combining industry and consumer information. I am of course biased but I think our new website is just fabulous.

Kudos to Michal Majernik, TRAC’s Manager of Communications, for his hard work and dedication in bringing this new site to life.

Please have a look and let us know what you think, at [email protected].

*Originally published with Autosphere.ca