Barcelona-bound with Sustainability in AV (SAVe)

It’s official: Sustainability in AV (SAVe), the nonprofit organization whose board includes Supervox partner Tim Alevizos, has been invited by Integrated Systems Europe to exhibit at ISE 2024, the world’s largest AV systems integration show.

This will be SAVe’s second trip to ISE, held annually in Barcelona. More important, it marks the second year of SAVe’s status as ISE’s official sustainability partner.

In June 2022, when SAVe announced itself to the world at InfoComm in Las Vegas, little did its founders suspect that mere months later it would debut on a global stage at ISE 2023. SAVe, after all, is a young organization, a true fledgling on the sustainability scene. Getting asked last year to introduce itself to a global audience – as ISE’s sustainability partner, no less – came as more than a surprise. We felt like a newly formed band whose first gig is an arena show. 

Now SAVe has been asked to return to Barcelona – and it feels like an even BIGGER deal. The first invitation could be seen as a leap of faith on ISE’s part. This second comes as a tremendous validation for what SAVe has achieved in just a year.

Back up a second, what’s SAVe – and how did Supervox get involved?

A registered 501(c)3 nonprofit, SAVe is the first U.S.-based industry-wide organization to bring the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the multi-billion-dollar global AV industry. It’s an independent, all-volunteer entity formed in response to the pressing need to achieve sustainability before it’s too late. The only way to accomplish that objective is for individuals, businesses, communities and nations to work together to achieve systemic change. 

The AV industry – like all others – has a responsibility to advance sustainability, but the need for action by members of the technology industry is especially pressing because of all the electronic waste it generates. All those cables, switchers, monitors and peripherals, which get replaced in a continuous cycle of product refreshment, createa terrible environmental consequences when disposed of improperly (just ask the people of Accra, Ghana – one of many dump sites for global technology waste).

The impetus to create SAVe came from one of Supervox’s clients, California-based ClearTech, an innovative AV integrator that knew firsthand just how much work the AV industry had ahead of it. Concerned about the rapidly closing window for achieving sustainability, ClearTech asked Supervox to help create an organization to drive change in AV and the larger technology industry. We responded enthusiastically. In addition to creating the SAVe brand and website, Supervox provides a steady stream of services for SAVe and also volunteers as a board member.

And now a bit about the SDGs

An abbreviation for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs represent an unprecedented collaboration among the nations of the world to map the scope of sustainability challenges we face and create a blueprint for addressing them. That blueprint comprises 17 goals that collectively need to be accomplished by 2030 in order to lay a foundation for a world in which our needs can be met without preventing future generations from meeting theirs. The goals range from ending poverty and eliminating hunger to addressing climate change, and attached to each are a total of 169 specific targets for action.

It’s a daunting challenge. But there’s simply no alternative but to press forward – because the fate of our businesses, communities and planet hangs in the balance.

Back to Barcelona

So why is SAVe’s return trip to Barcelona such a big deal? Because it’s testimony to the remarkable progress Sustainability in AV has achieved before it has even reached the toddler stage in its development. In just its first year of life:

• SAVe has launched two much-needed initiatives: SAVe Certification, a process by which businesses can develop sustainability plans which are actionable, measurable and sustainable in their own right; and SAVe: A Second Life, which involves building a national network to give AV gear a second life at the end of its first one – thereby keeping useable equipment out of the waste stream (and off the shores of places like Accra, Ghana and other countries where the West’s detritus is shipped and dumped).
• SAVe is establishing a global presence. Recognizing that sustainability can only be achieved on a planetary scale, SAVe is building a network of “SAVe Ambassadors” to represent the organization and advance its efforts worldwide. Already, SAVe has Ambassadors in Canada, Mexico and Colombia, with more on the way. 
• SAVe has established partnerships with a growing network of organizations that share its commitment to advancing the SDGs.  Among SAVe’s partners are Integrated Systems Europe (ISE); the Higher Education Technology Managers Association (HETMA), representing 600 colleges and universities nationwide; the Commission on Voluntary Service & Action (CVSA), a national network of volunteer organizations seeking to achieve sustainability; and EDGE, the world’s largest systems integrator consortium made up of the most progressive security and audio-visual systems integrators in North America. 
• SAVe has established “Sustaining Sponsor” relationships with industry leaders. They include Legrand, Netgear, PPDS, Shure, Sony and Visionary Network Audio and Video.
• SAVe has attracted volunteers throughout the industry – people committed to advancing its mission to achieve the SDGs.

The road ahead

We have far to go, and we have to move fast. “We,” by the way, means more than SAVe, more than Supervox, and more than the AV industry. We need government and big business to leverage their resources, too. 

How will that happen? Well, we have our work cut out for us. In 2015, the United States joined 192 other UN member nations in endorsing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Each nation promised not only to make progress on the SDGs but to report on that progress on a yearly basis. To date, the United States is one of only several nations (including Yemen, Haiti, South Sudan, and Myanmar) never to provide an accounting of our progress.

It’s clear that our government and corporate sector will not act unless pressured to. That pressure can only come from the masses of Americans who recognize and embrace the sustainability challenges we’re facing. Part of SAVe’s purpose is to join with others to harness that sentiment on a grassroots level so that we reach a tipping point where the will of the people can no longer be ignored. In the meantime, SAVe’s not waiting around. It’s on the move to advance meaningful change.

Visit saveav.org to learn more about SAVe and the mission Supervox proudly supports.