5 Ways to Create a Sustainable Metaverse

The Metaverse offers novel approaches to achieving sustainability goals and incorporating them into your business. But have you ever wondered what the impact of the Metaverse itself may have on sustainability?

It has become essential that sustainability is one of the core values of your business. Meeting climate goals and objectives must be integrated into your business strategy. One of the main challenges in this regard is to ensure that your sustainability-driven business model keeps evolving in lockstep with the increasing pace of technological innovation. Goals that were set two years ago could already be outdated. Along with the methods you have implemented to achieve those goals.

To exploit the full potential the Metaverse offers, companies will have to embark on a journey to prepare for the next stage of "total digitisation" with its increased demands on storage, data centres, processing capabilities and ultra-fast high bandwidth communication.
And do all this while prioritising sustainability. This will not be easy. But that is why you need to choose your technology partners carefully. Here are five steps to help you navigate through the next and biggest paradigm shift technology has ever faced.

Here are five steps to help you navigate through the next, and biggest, paradigm shift technology has ever faced.

1. The massive amount of data storage needed to develop the Metaverse may have a negative impact on climate goals. Add to this the rapid advance and deployment at scale of modern technologies that drive the growth of the Metaverse. This may result in the high consumption of non-renewable energy and waste production. Beware that the path to the Metaverse is not paved in an unacceptable increase in your company's carbon footprint.
2. To say that the Metaverse will be a data-rich environment is an understatement. Companies need to find a better answer to the question of where will they keep all their data? Building new data centres is an option. But large cloud-service data centres have been investing heavily in sustainable energy sources for data centres. Some data centres will be running carbon-free energy by 2030. Take care to ensure that data storage doesn't impact your journey to decarbonisation.
3. Consider the entire lifecycle of all the products you will use along your journey to upscale into the Metaverse. You can increase the sustainability score of your Metaverse by ensuring that all physical products have the minimum environmental impact throughout the entire lifecycle of the product. In this regard, cloud storage makes a lot of sense, but even the products getting you into the cloud should be considered.
4. Companies that supply hardware will come under increasing pressure to ensure that the products they sell don't end up in landfills, contaminating water and poisoning the environment. This can be avoided by implementing recycling programs, but also affording customers the opportunity to recycle their products back to suppliers. The manufacturers can then dispose of the products in a way that is environmentally friendly. The ideal would be that everything that goes out your factory door, will eventually make its way back in.
5. Companies who proactively take the initiative to hold themselves and their suppliers and customers accountable will generate a great deal of social capital and attract green investments. Partnering with companies who share your values and showing the market that value-driven relationships can increase profit will go a long way toward building momentum in climate action.

Paradigm Shift

The Metaverse is set to usher in a new era of technological change. Companies need to focus on participation and leadership as they take on the challenges that will propel them into the greatest technological paradigm shift of our generation.

By following the 5 steps briefly mentioned above, companies will ensure that the Metaverse is built around sustainability.