In January 2024 Francisco (BOAVISTA’s CEO) asked me to prepare a presentation about Sustainability to present at our annual staff meeting. I thought straight away “that’s going to be easy, I have a pre-
sentation ready, the one I usually use for training purposes”.

But then it hit me: If I start saying how great Boavista is, sustainability wise, no one will actually listen.
They already know our efforts to reduce our footprint. But does everyone know why we make such an
effort?
I looked at the last pictures shared on our Whatsapp group for inspiration. The last one was a team
photo just beside the christmas tree. “How will I engage these people? They are all so different… Some
work in the factory, others in the office. Some are in their 50’s, others are younger…” “I know! Let’s start
with Sérgio and Fernando and see where it goes.”
Sérgio is our Growth Associate and works with Francisco, the CEO. He’s also the youngest member of
the team. Fernando is part of the fabrication team and has more than 45 years of experience in the
field. Sérgio was born in 1997, Fernando was born in 1958. They both like football but that doesn’t help
me to build my presentation…

I started looking at stats.
When Fernando was born, there were 2,916,108,096 people in the world. When Sérgio was born, there
were 5,906,481,261. Today there are circa 8,046,000,000. Now that is interesting.
Between the do farther dates the world population almost tripled.

Ok, that is interesting. What about the emissions? I bet they grew by the same amount.

Ah! it increased by 5 times!! Ok, that must mean that the emissions per capita have increased.

Yup, there you go! But where does it come from?

Electricity and heat; Transport; Manufacturing and construction; Buildings. These are the 4 main res-
ponsibles for the CO2 emission problem in the world.

And BOAVISTA has an impact in all of them, directly or indirectly.

Ok, so we know CO2 emissions have been rising in the past century. But how does that impact our
lives?

The increase in CO2 emissions has a direct result on the planet’s temperature due to the Greenhouse effect. The CO2 and other gases increase the heat retention on the surface of the planet, which is re-
flected on these graphs that report the temperatures on land and water the past 70 years:

If we look at the land alone temperature, here what has been happening since 1880 (140 years):

Here’s what is happening to the energy storage due to temperature on the ocean water, just from 1960:

This graph shows what is happening to the temperature at the surface of the water.

What is more concerning is that 90% of global warming takes place in the ocean. The same ocean that
is a source of cooling and that is the main source of breathable air.
Here on this graph you can see the difference between the accumulated energy when
Fernando was born and when Sérgio was born. And it gets worse after that.

Now I could make a huge list of impacts of the warming effect on our planet’s life, from the agonizing
death by heat to the wildfires, hunger due to droughts, unbreathable air,
pandemics, climate conflict, etc, but let’s stick with something very simple. We all know what happens
when we heat water that was previously frozen. It melts. As simple as that. And that is precisely what
is happening to the ice glaciers and sheets of the world.

If we look at the data from the past 20 years alone provided by the European Space Agency, we see a
clear pattern in Greenland’s Ice sheets:

And what happens when the ice melts? It becomes liquid water, which adds to the existing water in the
oceans. Ergo, increasing the sea level.

Now look at this graph about the sea level (and the events that influence it):

Scientists have been recording the sea level since the beginning of the XX century – And this work has
been confirmed by satellite data since the 1990’s.

If you are located near the coastal line as we, BOAVISTA Windows’ team, do, you should be worried
about the fact that the land you know is not the land your grandchildren will know.
And the worst part is that we cannot reverse the increase in temperature that has already happened.
But we can help and avoid future increases and further damage.

So these graphs was what I brought to the staff meeting. And I have to say I never thought I would see
some of my colleagues speechless (Yes, Fernando, I am talking to you.).

The whole team can agree with the key message: we have to act where we can, as fast as we can.
Companies such as ours can do it working on two fronts: on their products and their actions.

Our goal must not be to just sell more at any cost. If we are looking to just sell more stuff, soon there
won’t be where/to whom to sell them to.

And this is why we have been working on the subject for the past 12 years. We have been thinking ahead.