eyeo's climate protection officer Christian Dommers gives his take on Earth Day 2021
If you’ve spent any time online in the last few days, you probably know that we are in Earth Week 2021. The week around Earth Day (April 22) is an occasion to remind us of the diminishing resources of our planet, and that those resources, which we often take for granted, are not free of charge.
The burden of our emissions and the hidden costs of our resource usage will be passed on to our children and grandchildren. We’re facing a serious risk for the wellbeing of humanity and many other species on this beautiful planet. It’s an uncomfortable reality that scientists all over the world have continued to highlight. Thus, for us, earth week is best seen as a call for attention and action.
Together with hundreds of other companies from the digital industry, we are asking our users and partners to join us in action against climate change. As consumers, we luckily have choices. Some minimal actions that anyone can take are for instance: using green energy, being more conscious about travelling, and engaging in sustainable banking and shopping, just to name a few. If you need some inspiration for what else to do, here is a great list of ideas.
Additionally at eyeo, we strive to reduce the emissions from our business activities to a minimum level. We measure the carbon emissions and offset the remaining balance by supporting CO2 saving projects.
Born from individual employees’ initiatives, we also created our own sustainability team in early 2019. This group contains people from different areas of the company who are united in their concern for the climate and their willingness to do something about it.
The sustainability team drives our combined efforts to make eyeo a carbon neutral company. Based on the team’s initiative, we implemented a new travel policy in 2019 that promotes low-emission business travel. The impetus for such a policy was obviously necessary: as a digital company in the internet industry with an international staff, 80% of our emissions came from airplane travel. We’ve flown in between and to our offices, to events, to trade fairs and to business partners.
We’re confident that the new policy, especially in a “post-pandemic world”, will help us to keep emissions from travel as low as possible while not sacrificing any business progress or the wellbeing of our employees.
The sustainability team also pushed for a more sustainable procurement policy. At eyeo we’re now very conscious about all the products and services we buy. Our data centers should run on green energy, our food must come from regional and sustainable providers and we try to prevent waste wherever we can.
In addition, members of the sustainability team also educate and inform other colleagues about climate change to keep the topic forefront in our minds.
Climate action at eyeo started with smaller initiatives yet has grown into something significant where all our employees have joined the efforts. We urge you to do the same. Everybody can start with small and easy steps. And if we’re lucky it will grow into something bigger.
Let’s do this together!
