Le Grand Défi, time for sharing

But what is this “Great challenge” and what is the link with SEDIVER?
Companies have a vital role to play in the environmental transition, but they need to be supported and connected with their ecosystem to make change possible.

The Grand Défi was created to address this challenge and involve French companies into the definition and creation of new economic models compatible with the planet boundaries.

100 companies have been selected at random to represent France economic ecosystem and SEDIVER was one of them!

This initiative was orchestrated around three stages along 2022:

• The “Great consultation”: a survey was launched to better understand the expectations, obstacles, and possible actions of the business community on the environmental transition in order to nurture the full process.
• The “Great deliberation”: the 1st objective was to increase the awareness of all the delegates on environmental topics ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss by conferences with renowned experts. The 2nd was to bring them together and leverage collective intelligence to have them debate and design 100 proposals that could impact and change our business models positively.
• The “Great diffusion”: after 6 sessions of collective work, the 100 proposals were presented on 9th of February at the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (EESC). This was the kick-off for a larger diffusion among the corporate and legislative spheres to promote these proposals widely.

More info on “Le Grand Défi » process and partners can be found on their website.

These 100 proposals for transformation are either internal, embarking ecosystems or dealing with regulation.

• Internal to the company: concrete, strategic and operational, these proposals are grouped into 11 categories along the business model steps, from governance, through production & distribution down to compensation.
• Transverse: these proposals are promoting trajectories and reference objectives, progress indicators, impact measurements, in relation to the ecosystem.
• External to the company: these proposals are aimed at guiding public policies (standards, regulations, laws) and offering a favourable framework for companies to embrace chance.

The 100 proposals (French) can discovered here.

Sediver has been actively participating in this initiative, both in the proposal design but also in the diffusion and concrete application of some of these proposals.

After having worked with all the other delegates for more than 6 months, we had to share the findings to our internal teams. We started with our French teams and discussed about what actions we could implement. Several initiatives were already under way but being part of the group and sharing a joint ambition gives credit and energy to go further… And this is one of our values “Always going further”!

What’s next?

We will 1st go further by sharing with our employees worldwide, collect their feedback and involve them in our CSR action roadmap. We have already pre-identified proposals that are relevant to our business, and we will drive them forward with the teams.
Some actions are already live or will be delivered in the short-term and we have a second batch that we would like to include in our ambition for the next two years.

Planned actions

• E2: further train all our employees in environmental issues
• R5: define an ambitious trajectory for reducing our environmental footprint
• E7: set up an environmental alert system based on the model of the near misses (already live 😊)
• C3 and C4: eco-design of communication campaigns and events

Future actions

• A variation on proposals P16-17-18: to further extend the life of our products
• A variation of proposals D1-D2-D3 on the display of our products’ environmental performance

We also need to play our part as ambassadors of these proposals and connect with our ecosystem, local organizations, customers and suppliers to further push transformation across all our geographies. The journey is only starting, and we have a long way to go but we are set in motion!

If you are a french speaker

Sophie Donabedian also participated to a podcast episode, where, alongside Jérôme Cohen, co-founder of the Grand Défi and Valentine Rebattet, CSR Manager at atlasformen and at the microphone of Alexandre Kouchner, editor-in-chief of L’ADN le Shift, Sophie shares our experience.

• Site So good
• Spotify
• Deezer
• Apple podcast