[Techtaffy Newsdesk]
More organizations worldwide are building sustainability into their service provider selection and purchasing processes, according to the results from the 2012 Rackspace Green Survey.
Rackspace randomly selected 2000 customers, of which 232 responded. Customers from 24 countries responded to the survey including participants from the U.K., New Zealand, Australia and Brazil. When questioned on the importance of sustainability versus cost, a margin of only 8 percentage points separates responses from customers in the United States from those in the other 23 countries: 72 percent of U.S. respondents and 80 percent of international respondents say that “greener is better.”
Melissa Gray (Director of sustainability, Rackspace): We see sustainability expanding from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have.’
Rackspace’s findings point to an increasingly established trend to embrace and include sustainability practices within the purchasing process. When it comes to influencing purchasing decisions, 72 percent of the U.S. respondents said they believe sustainability is important in selecting a service provider as well as influencing a purchasing decision. In the rest of the world, 91 percent, build sustainability into their purchasing decisions on either a periodic or standard basis. Countries outside the United States seem to put a greater emphasis on weighting sustainability as part of purchasing decisions.
A Few Rackspace Perspectives
Customers not only embrace a holistic view of sustainability around the world, but are paying attention to how selecting solid partners as part of their supply chain makes good business sense.
- Overall, sustainability is viewed positively around the world and defined holistically regardless of geography or company size.
- Sustainability gives a service provider an edge over another regardless if two choices are equal or not, according to 74% of respondents.
- Even when two choices are not equal, International companies will choose the sustainable option 60% more often than U.S. customers.
[Image Courtesy: Rackspace]