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As an environmental, social and governance analyst at Tessy Plastics Corp., Kanchan Shrestha relies on data to prioritize sustainable actions and bring clarity to achieve science-based targets to reduce the company's emissions.
"You cannot manage what you don't measure," Shrestha said. "Applying that to plastic and sustainability, we rely heavily on different sets of data and understanding where to prioritize our actions is critical."
With a background in environmental research, nonprofit and government organizations, Shrestha said she was drawn to the private sector to be a part of "where the solutions are emerging … rather than advocating from the outside."
"Working in the plastics industry is very exciting," she said. "It's challenging … especially for somebody from an environmental background, but there's a lot of innovation happening, and I wanted to be a part of it. … I strongly believe everyone can support creating a circular economy for plastics, whether it is increasing awareness on sustainability and actions you can take at an individual level or innovating new technologies.
"There are so many different kinds of plastics and also so many ways that it is produced," Shrestha added. "Understanding how we're producing plastics and how we're using the energy in the process is very important … to prioritize where we want to focus our action."
Shrestha aided Tessy's sustainability goals by setting up the company's science-based targets, which were approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative, a collaboration among the CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature.
She also integrated sustainability awareness into Tessy's regular trainings "so that everyone at the company understands our sustainability goals and participates in various initiatives," she said, and contributed to Tessy's first Ecovadis Gold rating, an assessment platform that rates business sustainability.
"The plastics industry should deepen its value chain engagement for circular economy to demonstrate examples of economically viable projects that reduce the environmental impact," she said. "We also need user-friendly life cycle assessment tools that help in sustainability decision-making. … Data on emission factors are limited for the plastics industry and are behind paywalls."
Tessy has been measuring its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, "which is just our direct emissions, our facilities and our purchased electricity," Shrestha said. "But we know that the majority of our emissions come from our value chain, our indirect emissions. In the last two years we've been able to complete our Scope 3 inventory and demonstrate that the majority of our emissions … and get time-based targets to reduce those emissions."
Before her plastics career, Shrestha was the program manager at Earthwatch Institute, where she led sustainability educational programs. She was also a program coordinator at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal and led the Koshi Basin Initiative to implement action research projects on climate change and natural resource management. Someday, Shrestha said, she hopes to be a chief sustainability officer.
"It is even more challenging to implement avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle … in the health care markets" she said. "Companies that are testing out solutions in the health care industry are inspirational and will have a lasting impact.
"The year 2023 was the hottest year that we've seen," Shrestha said. "The intensity and the frequency of weather events is increasing. … They are more intense and more frequent. [Climate change] can disrupt our transportation. … Everyone is now very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. I'm hopeful and positive ... because there is a lot of innovation investment happening not just by the government, but also by private sector."