Once an abstract buzzword, today a relevant operational necessity
With the signing of the European Green Deal at the latest, sustainability has become a concrete criterion in the orientation and financing of companies. This means that, in addition to their economic value orientation, business models increasingly need to consider sustainability goals within the framework of the society/social and ecological dimensions (3-pillar model).
It is time for business models to focus on sustainability. Time to assign greater importance to the ecology and society/social dimensions. And time to set up your own corporate performance and resilience for the future with a targeted sustainability strategy.
1. The starting point is the surveying of the current “level of sustainability maturity”.
2. Derivation of an individual sustainability strategy, geared towards increasing corporate value.
3. The progress of the process is documented within the context of sustainability reporting, which is to be developed in parallel.
4. The individual sustainability strategy takes effect, and begins to show results.
Constant availability, in combination with a lot of business travel. How sustainable can the consulting sector actually be? How can our everyday working life be reconciled with active climate protection? It is not as if we have only just started dealing with these questions today. More than twelve years ago, we started to find ways to counteract the harmful effects of the greenhouse gas emissions we cause. This also includes all Scope-3 emissions – i.e. indirect emissions that arise in our company’s value chain.
Year after year since 2009, SMP has supported the Succow Foundation, founded by Michael Succow, a pioneer of moorland bog research and protection, and winner of the alternative Nobel prize. And for good reason: Moorland bogs have been shown to be one of the largest and most effective carbon sinks of all terrestrial habitats. Despite their limited distribution area, they sequester one third of terrestrial carbon – twice as much as all the world’s forests put together. One demand of the Paris climate conference was therefore that moorland bogs must grow.
We go even further: SMP draws up its own carbon footprint, verified by external experts, and compensates for (unavoided) CO2 emissions. For 2019, we did this predominantly in a very expensive but also very convincing way, namely by acquiring MoorFutures from the Nature Conservation Foundation of Schleswig-Holstein for the re-naturalisation of the Königsmoor moorland bog (Stiftung Naturschutz Schleswig-Holstein zur Renaturierung des Königsmoors) in the Rendsburg-Eckernförde district. There we offset 500 tonnes of CO2. The Königsmoor bog is part of a high moorland bog covering a total of around 1200 hectares, which was heavily drained over the course of the 20th century. One particular plus point of this project is transparency: The compensation areas can be visited because they are here in Germany. We have just calculated our emissions for the year 2020, and will also fully offset these.
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