atNorth joins UN Global Compact

Author: Simon Rowley

atNorth, the Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, has become a signatory of the United Nations’ Global Compact as part of its ongoing commitment to business sustainability.

The UN Global Compact is a voluntary initiative that enables members to align their operations and strategies with 10 universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Launched in 2000, the UN Global Compact is the largest corporate sustainability initiative in the world and involves an annual disclosure of responsible business practices.

Corporate responsibility is a core part of atNorth’s business ethos, and the company has evidenced this through its strategic Nordic locations, proprietary data centre design, heat reuse programmes and adherence to ISO14001 and ISO 45001 guidelines. These factors allow customers such as BNP Paribas and Shearwater Geoservices to decarbonise their IT workloads.

The business has been a strong voice on the topic of the environmental impact of the data centre industry and is a member of several data centre industry associations in addition to the Infrastructure Masons Climate Accord – a coalition united on carbon reduction in digital infrastructure and the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact that is an agreement to make data centres climate neutral by 2030.

By joining the UN Global Compact, atNorth will continue to share insight into its sustainability journey as a whole and inspire the data centre industry to not only mitigate its ecological risk, but to strive towards positive and restorative environmental and community impact.

“As awareness of the environmental and social impact of digital infrastructure continues to grow, we are committed to raising the bar and leading by example as a responsible business within the data centre industry”, says Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO atNorth. “By actively aligning with the globally recognised UN Global Compact, we will provide a transparent account of our progress across the board”.

atNorth recently appointed Cora Olsen, Director of Sustainability, to lead the continuous development and implementation of the business’s sustainability strategy which includes coordinating its alignment and reporting to the UN Global Compact’s principles.

Cora comments, “Having recently joined atNorth, I am very impressed by the high level of ambition when it comes to sustainability. Becoming a signatory to the UN Global Compact is an important step forward to demonstrate our commitment to the global sustainability agenda.”

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