When we think about sustainability, we almost always link it to eco-friendly disposal, recycling, and emissions. That matters, but it’s only part of the story. In the audio and video (AV) world, sustainability is also about education, operational efficiency, diversity, responsible design, and partnerships that amplify impact and results. 

Back in 2015, 193 UN member countries approved the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to guide governments, businesses, and society toward a more prosperous and fair future by 2030. A few of these SDGs connect directly with AV challenges and opportunities: 

SDG 4 (Quality Education): training, reskilling, and raising the technical bar are essential to close the talent gap and speed up the digital transformation across corporate, education, and cultural spaces. In AV, upskilling is human and market sustainability. 

SDG 5 (Gender Equality): increasing the participation and leadership of women across engineering, integration, support, and management. Diversity boosts innovation and performance—companies in the top quartile for diversity tend to perform better financially (McKinsey, Diversity Wins, 2020). 

SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): design for durability, reuse, modularity, energy efficiency, and reverse logistics. In a sector with fast tech turnover, extending product lifecycles and reducing e-waste has a direct impact. 

SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals): the AV ecosystem thrives when manufacturers, integrators, consultants, end users, and associations align on common standards and metrics. 

The critical point hasn’t changed: we need to educate the market. 

Without education, responsible practices don’t scale, and teams aren’t ready to implement them. In AV, sustainability is a strategy for risk reduction, healthy growth, and ultimately, higher profitability. Less rework, lower energy use, fewer support calls, happier customers, and better resale value. 

A great reference here is SAVe (Sustainability in AV), a non-profit that brings industry leaders together to align AV practices with the SDGs. They offer the “SAVe Guide to Sustainable AV Design and Installation,” a free, practical resource to help integrators adopt criteria like choosing committed brands, reusing equipment, reducing energy consumption, minimizing installation materials, and guiding clients to operate systems efficiently. 

Is your company already measuring energy consumption and system lifespan for AV in operation? How often do those numbers influence new projects? 

Have you added reuse and reverse logistics clauses to your RFPs? What barriers have you run into? 

Let’s keep this conversation going. If you’re already applying sustainable AV practices, share an example or a metric that made a difference. 

In the spirit of SDG 17, we can make a bigger impact together.