Earth Day 2021 reminds us that now, more than ever, we need sustainable, conscious business conduct that considers our impact on the world. The theme of Earth Day 2021 is “Restore Our Earth” and focuses on emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems. This year’s theme aligns with Cubic’s commitment to reduce our impact on the planet.
Our Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) Strategy
Cubic's ESG strategy allows us to communicate with our customers, suppliers, employees, regulators, non-governmental organizations across multiple communication channels at the local and global level. By doing so, it allows Cubic to transparently communicate issues of importance and relevance in the communities in which we operate.
The key elements of our ESG Strategic Framework are Environment, Social Capital, Human Capital, Business & Innovation, and Legal and Governance.
In our ESG Strategy we outline our approach to reducing our impact on the environment. The products we develop, the eco-conscious design of our global headquarters, and our culture of enabled and engaged employees embody the environmental pillar of our strategy.
Our Products
Our goal is to make a positive difference in people’s lives. It is essential that our products and services mitigate adverse environmental impacts, as our environmental footprint affects the livelihood of the people we serve.
Improving public transit and mobility systems are essential to meeting climate goals in major metropolitan areas. Cubic Transportation Systems provides a suite of tools which help cities reduce congestion by encouraging people to take public transportation.
Our scalable digital platform-based technology allows riders to pay for all modes of travel, however they choose—through mobile payments, contactless, or account-based ticketing, connects multiple modes of transportation, and rewards ap users with incentives which they can collect and redeem. By simplifying a rider’s experience, from start to finish, and encouraging more people to use public transportation, we hope to reduce the number of vehicles, congestion, and emissions on roads and highways in major cities like London, Brisbane, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
To identify areas of improvement, we work closely with our business units to measure our energy consumption globally allowing us to make decisions to further reduce Cubic’s global impact.
Our Headquarters
In early 2021, Cubic completed the construction of our new headquarters in San Diego, California. Careful planning and consideration went into the build of our headquarters focusing on energy use, water generation, and water consumption.
Cubic partnered with EDF Renewables to design an integrated renewable energy system consisting of solar, storage and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. To minimize water generation and water consumption, indoors, the building uses fixtures which reduce water consumption; outdoors, a combination of water efficient irrigation and native vegetations reduce outdoor water consumption by 68%.
The mindful, eco-conscious design of our headquarters is a critical component of our strategy as it pertains to reducing our impact to the atmosphere and supporting the global efforts to combat climate change.
Our Culture
We have active C-Green Employee Resource Groups (ERG) in several different countries that we operate in, including the U.S., U.K., New Zealand and India who work to promote Cubic’s environmentally sustainable culture. They regularly support the reduction of our environmental footprint through a variety of grassroots initiatives and activities such as beach clean ups, educational webinar sessions, and E-waste recycling drives.
What’s next?
We set an initial goal to reduce CO2 intensity by 20% from our 2019 baseline by fiscal year 2025. In fiscal year 2020, as COVID-19 caused our company to transition to a primarily remote workforce, we recorded a CO2 intensity reduction of 17% and expect to meet or exceed this initial target by the end of fiscal year 2021. The shift to remote work and the reduction of our real estate foot print led us to set an additional 25% CO2 intensity reduction target for fiscal year 2022 through 2025.
Celebrating Earth Day is an integral way to raise awareness about the current state of our climate and serves as an opportunity for corporations to hold themselves accountable for their environmental impact. I'm proud of the progress Cubic has made in reducing our environmental impact, but we acknowledge that there is still has much work to be done. We are committed to integrating sustainable practices into our innovation, design, service, and manufacturing processes every day. You can keep up with our environmental impact journey on our website: https://www.cubic.com/esg.
