Steven Commander, Director & Head of Consultants and Regulations, HID evaluates the different benefits mobile and physical access management systems have on sustainability.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals have companies taking a closer look at their environmental footprint and considering sustainability with nearly every significant business decision—including those related to access management systems.  

The growing influence of sustainability on business decisions should come as no surprise, particularly among companies in the UK where regulations including the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) mandate reporting on environmental and societal impacts. 

As a result, UK companies are ahead of the global transparency curve, with KPMG noting that 99% of companies in the UK report on sustainability and 93% include those disclosures in the annual report and accounts.   

End users are also stepping up demands for footprint transparency from suppliers in terms of operations, product sourcing, research and development practices.

Sustainability was ranked as important or extremely important by 87% of respondents to HID’s 2024 State of Security and Industry Report, while 76% said sustainability is increasing in importance for their customers.   

One sector where sustainability’s influence on product source is readily apparent is physical access control.

HID’s 2024 State of Physical Access Trend Report identified a shift toward aligning security decisions with environmental goals, with nearly two-thirds (63%) of the more than 1,200 enterprise decision-makers worldwide surveyed saying they now involve those responsible for sustainability in decisions around upgrading physical access control systems.

When asked about the top three drivers behind physical access control solution upgrades, ‘to support the company’s sustainability goals’ was cited by 15% of respondents, with 12% citing features such as ‘low energy consumption hardware’.

Energy saving solutions were also cited by 14% as one of the top three trends shaping the wider access control industry.   

Sustainability: Mobile vs. Physical Access  

When it comes to assessing sustainability and environmental impacts within the access control space, the most obvious jumping-off point is credentials.

Specifically, the impact differential between mobile credentials and traditional PVC cards.    

Logic would dictate that mobile access—which utilises credential stored on smartphones and watches for physical and logical access control—would have a lower environmental impact than its plastic counterpart. After all, mobile access relies on existing devices.

However, there is still an environmental cost, which is what HID sought to determine via a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment (LCA) comparing the HID ISOProx PVC Card and HID Mobile Access solution.   

The LCA was conducted by Sustainable Solutions Corporation using the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 principles and framework.

Upon completion, results were reviewed and verified by an external independent third-party panel, as required by the ISO standards.    

As reported in Cradle-to-Grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Mobile Access Vs. ISOProx PVC Credentials, the LCA found that mobile access has a substantially lower negative environmental impact than PVC cards by every measure—including global warming potential, fossil fuel depletion, eutrophication (excess runoff of nutrients into freshwater), smog formation, acidification and ozone depletion.   

The LCA determined that, when compared to the PVC cards, mobile access:  

• Emits the equivalent of 75% less carbon dioxide 

• Results in the depletion of 83% less fossil fuel resources  

• Generates the equivalent of 88% less nutrient runoff 

• Contributes to the equivalent of 92% less smog production  

• Is 94% less likely to contribute to acid rain 

• Is 99.99% less likely to contribute to ozone layer depletion  

The life cycle impacts for mobile access solutions are strongly driven by raw materials, which contributed about 55% of its impact across all measures.

For PVC cards, the manufacturing process and raw materials were the two strongest environmental impact drivers.    

The mobile advantage  

The findings of the LCA do more than just confirm mobile access solutions’ much smaller environmental footprint.

They are also invaluable for informing decisions on deploying more environmentally friendly solutions and helping architects, engineers and specifiers design buildings that meet environmental certifications like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BREEAM.     

The findings also support the sustainability benefits that mobile access has over PVC cards, most notably a reduction in plastic waste—a global problem that sees 19-23 million tons of plastic leaking every year into the world’s ocean, rivers and lakes each year.

That’s the daily equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic waste, much of which comes from the more than 37.1 billion plastic cards produced each year, including 6 billion in Europe alone. Switching to mobile access options can make a sizable dent in those figures.    

Compared to traditional plastic cards, mobile credentials are also more energy efficient.

However, their benefits over physical access options extend beyond sustainability to include security and operational advantages.  

For example, mobile access solutions leverage the multiple layers of security within smartphones, such as biometric authentication and passcodes, to add an extra layer of protection that physical cards cannot access.

Storing mobile credentials—which can also be encrypted to further reduce the risk of cloning or unauthorised duplication—in users’ digital wallets taps into yet another layer of security and convenience.  

On the operations and administrative side, digital credentials offer several efficiencies that benefit the entire organisation.

They are simple to distribute, manage and integrate easily with existing mobile-enabled access control systems as well as other mobile apps and back-office systems, such as scheduling, time and attendance and facility management.

This creates a unified platform across which to control and access multiple functions, benefiting both users and those tasked with managing these broader operational functions.   

Innovation and sustainability  

Sustainability is an important business driver, one that is evident in the innovations emerging around access control.

Organisational commitments like those made by HID to science-based targets that will reduce carbon footprints and emissions are shaping the mobile access market with sustainable, eco-friendly solutions that move the needle closer to net-zero emissions.  

Undertaking LCAs to better understanding the exact environmental impact of digital and physical access products is critical for informing sustainable designs and deployments.

To learn more about the LCA of HID’s mobile access and PVC card products, download Cradle-to-Grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) here.  

This article was originally published in the December Edition of Security Journal UK. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.