Noch sind viele unternehmerische Geschäftsmodelle Hauptverursacher von Emissionen weltweit. Doch hinter Unternehmen und Geschäftsmodelle stecken Menschen - die wiederum Geschäftsmodelle ändern können: von fossilen Praktiken hin zu klimaneutralem Wirtschaften.
Die betriebliche Klimavorsorge ist ein erster Anstoß für diese Veränderung in Unternehmen: 1) als Belegschaft gemeinschaftlich klimaneutral zu werden und 2) als Unternehmen die eigenen Geschäftsmodelle in eine nachhaltige Zukunft zu transformieren.

Das Konzept der betrieblichen Klimavorsorge wurde bei Dark Horse als Open Source Projekt ins Leben gerufen. Mehr Infos und Materialien findet man hier: https://blog.thedarkhorse.de/nachhaltigkeitsinnovation/die-betriebliche-klimavorsorge-weil-klimaschutz-teamsport-ist/

Collect benefits to convince others

Review latest target-setting resources

Review sector-specific considerations

Submit a commitment letter

Choose a (predefined) base year

Choose a (predefined) target year

Exclude the use of offsets

Determine how to treat scope 3 emissions

Follow best practices

Submit target(s) for validation

Announce target(s) and inform others

Disclose your progress

Develop and set a near-term science-based target

Appoint a member of the executive team to be responsible for your commitments

Appoint a member of leadership team to be accountable for commitments

Cutting down on your flights and moving towards train travel has a significant impact on your carbon footprint.

For domestic routes under five hours by train, take the train.
Railway stations are often more centrally located than airports, which makes arrival and departure easier and reduces the footprint of using taxis.  

Mark this action as completed as soon as you change your corporate travel policy accordingly.


Trains over planes

For intercontinental travel, a seat in business class produces __two to three times__ as much CO2 as an economy seat. 
First-class seats even produce up to __six times__ as much CO2.

Mark this action as completed as soon as you change your corporate travel policy and make sure that you buy only economy class tickets from now on.

Economy flights only

Use video conferencing whenever possible 

Set up a policy for sustainable business travel

High consumption of animal-sourced foods (such as 
meat and diary products), comes with a heavy price for the environment. According to 
Project Drawdown, if 50–75% of people adopt a healthy diet with an overall reduction of meat consumption, at least 54.19–78.48 gigatons of emissions could be avoided from dietary change alone. 
In this action, you will find suggestions on how to introduce food policies that will make a plant-rich diet the new normal in your day-to-day work. Also, we will provide you with some tips on how to communicate this change in the right way to your colleagues.

Get the right people on board

Create a sustainable food task force. 

Understand where your colleagues stand

Identify areas of action 

Collect benefits and examples to convince others

Incentivize plant-rich meals

Produce sustainable food in the office

Incentivise local, organic and seasonal food consumption

Educate your team on the impact of meat-based diets

For remote teams: Give your employees sustainable food vouchers

Communicate internally and externally

Calculate emissions saved

Create clear labeling in your canteen and events

Communicate your choices to customers.

Introduce a plant-rich diet in the workplace

Evaluate the landscape and decide if you want to switch to a different provider or region

Minimize the carbon emissions generated from your cloud computing

Talk to your hosting company

Power your digital infrastructure using 100% renewable energy 

Find a green hosting service

Get the Green Web Foundation label

Get certified

Select a provider that operates on actual renewable energy rather than renewable energy credits

Host your website with a provider that uses 100% renewable energy

Make sure that:
- you have a company-wide recovery and recycling program that includes: paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, metal, and composting
- you recycle waste not only from the kitchen but also all papers in your working spaces, cartons at your warehouse, etc.
- your utility service works with all types of waste after you separate it, so it goes into the correct waste sorting centers.

Ensure proper waste separation

What you can do to print less:
- implement electronic signature systems where possible
- instead of printing reports before business meetings, use more screens in meeting rooms
- decrease the amount of pages by reducing font or page border sizes of regularly printed documents: contracts, agreements, etc.
- add a reminder to print less in your corporate signatures
- as a default setting, double-sided printing in black and white is recommended.

Plus, you can recycle your printer cartridges using a free recycling box from [Caritas](https://www.caritas.de/spendeundengagement/andershelfen/caritasbox/caritasboxstartseite). 

Adopt a sustainable printing policy

Mark this action as completed if you will buy office supplies made from recycled materials, produced and delivered in an eco-friendly way from now on. 

Recycled paper is 100% made from used paper, saving resources and water. Although the recycled paper is no longer pure white, it is also free of peroxides, sodium carbonate, and sodium hydroxide. These chemicals are used both in the production of fresh fibre paper and for bleaching paper. Recycled paper has two to three times lower energy consumption during production. 

At [Memo](http://www.memo.de), [EarthHero](https://earthhero.com/product-category/home/office-supplies/), or [GreenPicks](https://www.greenpicks.de/en/office-supplies-stationery/) you can find all of your sustainable office supplies.

Use eco-friendly office supplies

One of the projects where you can find cleaning products and soap without microplastic: [Zero Waste Era](https://www.zerowasteera.com)

Mark this action as completed if you will buy only eco-friendly cleaning products and soap for your office from now on. 

Use eco-friendly cleaning products

Our aim here is to minimize the delivery footprint and support local businesses.
Only purchase food and drinks with verified environmental standards. 


 Buy local, organic and seasonal food and drinks

These purchases can influence your carbon footprint significantly. 
- implement a repair-first policy: it's better to fix a laptop than buy a new one
- regularly calculate and check the footprint created by your equipment purchases (some companies, such as [Apple](https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13-inch_MacBookPro_PER_may2019.pdf) and [Dell](https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/CorpComm_Docs/en/carbon-footprint-latitude-7490.pdf), share data about their products’ footprint on their websites)
- when you need to buy things for your new office, don't just pay attention to them being made of ‘natural’ materials, but also to their production footprint
- utilize old and broken equipment in specially designated places.

Ensure responsible use of office equipment

Here are some ideas on how to make your marketing materials more eco-friendly:
- at conferences, fairs, and festivals, consider digital ways to interact with potential customers: screens, VR & AR, QR-codes, projections, e-business cards, and catalogs, etc.
- if you do choose to produce some giveaways, opt for materials with less of an end-of-life process
- order production locally to avoid causing additional emissions through deliveries
- improve your planning process to minimize waste after events.

Minimize giveaways of t-shirts, flyers, and stickers

What you can do:
- encourage your colleagues to order food delivery less: organize lunch in your office, subsidize lunch in the nearest cafes, or arrange food delivery in reusable containers,
- make sure you use glasses in your office and wash them instead of one-use plastic cups,
- buy beverages in returnable glass bottles,
- buy office snacks in bigger packages with less plastic.

Reduce plastic waste

Install low-flow faucets, toilets, and urinals in your office. 
Low-flow should meet or exceed the following EPA WaterSense standards: faucets use a maximum of [1.5 gpm](http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/products/bathroom_sink_faucets.html), toilets - [max 1.28 gallons per flush](http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/products/toilets.html).


Conserve water

Make your office more sustainable

Spread the word about tools that empower personal action

Support strikes

Educate about the carbon footprint

Educate and engage your customers in climate action

Mark as done to participate

Join the Teams Challenge

Join our Time for Climate Action campaign

Have an internal conversation about the causes you wish to support 

Set aside a budget 

Find a provider

Prioritise nature-based solutions

Ensure projects do not have adverse effects

Prioritise projects with an immediate effect

Ensure environmental and social safeguards

Contribute to global adaptation

Ensure robustness

Purchase credits

Keep a net positive mentality 

Report on progress

Compensate for your emissions to help society reach net zero faster

There are many established as well as new banks that offer similar services to their traditional competitors, except for one important difference: They invest your money according to high sustainability standards.

Assess your current bank's credentials

Decide on your approach

Your corporate finance can influence the climate more than you think. Use this power:
- Look at how the company capital is secured, such as where it gets its project financing and loans. Where possible, move this business to [banks](https://www.triodos.co.uk/about-us) that refuse to invest in businesses dependent on fossil fuels.
- Talk to your accountants. They can help set up systems to measure and manage climate related externalities. They can support your finance team in raising and allocating the funds your organization needs for transition and adaptation, embedding greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions within your organization’s decision-making processes, and accurately tracking and reporting performance against reduction targets. 
- If your company operates in the financial sector, ensure your financial investments support [low carbon initiatives](http://fossilfreefunds.org).

Change your bank

Apply pressure on your current bank

Share with your stakeholders

Join public campaigns

Influence your partners and suppliers

Switch to a sustainable bank 

Switching to a 100% renewable energy provider for your office energy is a simple but effective step to reduce your company's carbon footprint. It is important to use a reliable provider which transparently communicates the orgins of its energy.

Switch to a 100% renewable energy provider, including electricity and other energy consumption from heating, hot water, etc. Often it’s the most impactful thing companies can do immediately. 

Even if you lease your office, it's still possible to switch, but it requires some time and effort.

We recommend the following green electricity providers in Germany: [Greenpeace Energy](http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/products/toilets.html), [Naturstrom](https://www.naturstrom.de/geschaeftskunden/), [Elektrizitäts Werke Schönau](https://www.ews-schoenau.de/ews/energiedienstleistungen/angebote-fuer-gewerbekunden/) 

Note: The difference in savings from the future footprint offsetting will often be more than a slight increase in energy cost. 

Your office (and warehouses) run on 100% renewable energy

Switch to sustainable heating

Buy your own solar plant

Advocate for a more sustainable energy consumption

Switch to renewable energy

Dark Horse

Establish baseline

Set goals and prioritise 

Identify employee touch points

Build a case internally 

Find relevant and engaging climate content

Identify suitable formats to educate employees

Identify key climate dates

Facilitate climate conversations

Raise awareness on footprint compensation 

Raise awareness about high-impact reduction actions

Organise sustainability-focused team (building) activities 

Add a climate clause to your employee handbook or employment contracts

Consider sustainability in employee benefits

Identify fun ways to reward employees

Encourage colleagues to join a climate strike 

Offer trainings, courses and workshop on key climate issues

Incentivize your employees to support climate-focused causes

Create collaborative space on the topic of footprint reduction 

Share how you educate and engage your employees

Questions on your mind?

Educate and engage your employees in climate action

Transforming investment approaches from environmentallly harmful activities into sustainable projects can have a big impact in transforming our economy.

Screen the landscape to find the right fund for your company

Set up pensions with environmentally responsible providers and provide employees with the choice to switch to these providers. Look into funds that directly put part of their investments into impact investment projects that will deliver returns and social impact over the long-term.

Offer eco-responsible pensions for your employees

Offer sustainable pension to employees

Most public transport companies offer corporate ticket programs. Moreover, these programs are also tax-deductible.
Check out how it works at Berlin’s [BVG](https://www.bvg.de/corporate-ticket).

Public transportation subsidies


__Minimal requirements:__
- join the government bicycle subsidizing program, which allows employees to spend on bikes and equipment, tax-free, making a claimed saving of up to 42 per cent on the overall value. e.g. [JobRad](https://www.jobrad.org/arbeitgeber.html) (DE) and [CycleScheme](https://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/?utm_source=knowledge-base&utm_medium=web-link&utm_campaign=can-i-apply-ee) (UK).
-  ask for commitment. At the beginning of spring, riders commit to a certain frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) of commutes by bike. High frequency riders get bigger bike subsidies if they fulfill their commuting goals for the year. Track riders over the next twelve months with an honor-system spreadsheet. If they meet their riding commitment, they receive their full subsidy as a year-end-bonus. 

__If you want to go the extra mile:__
- Invest in a basic maintenance and repair station. This could be as limited as a bike pump, multi-tool, and bin of replacement tubes, or a full setup with a truing stand and bike repair rack.
- Offer a bike pool for your employees. All it requires is an up-front investment in a small collection of bikes – preferably low maintenance models with internal gearing – and geometry that scales well to a range of rider sizes. Establish your bike pool at the beginning of the calendar year and encourage riding with bonuses and incentives for participation. 
- Engage: track miles and ride frequency in an honor-system and organize monthly group rides.
- Dedicate a shower for riders, with a changing room and personal locker area. 

Cycle-to-work program

If it has to be the car after all for some team members, you can offer them to use shared car services such as [Clevershuttle](https://www.clevershuttle.de/en/), [Pendler Portal](https://www.pendlerportal.de/), [Berlkönig](https://www.pendlerportal.de/). 

Car sharing/pooling, instead of car owning

You can just add it as a requirement in your interview invitation template, or offer to cover train ticket costs for travels less than 5 hours. 
In many cases, responsible candidates prefer to work in companies who care about the environment, so such requirements can even increase your chances to hire the best team members. 

Train travel for on-site job interviews

If your company has its own carpool, investing in electric company cars can improve the environmental balance as long as the electric cars run on green electricity. 

Electric cars only for taxi services, rentals, and company fleet 

Start tracking it regularly and set reduction goals.
If your company’s headcount grows extremely quickly, track the commute footprint normalized by the number of employees in the corresponding quarter.


Quarterly survey to track commute footprint

Encourage sustainable commuting

Highlight products that can be delivered locally

Suggest a "slow delivery" option at checkout

Choose a pioneering last-mile startup to cooperate with 

Demand innovations from your courier service

Build local micro-fulfilment centers

Opt for pick-up station delivery

Choose sustainable fuels for your own deliveries

Innovate last-mile delivery

Understand the end goal

Create internal awareness

Organise a workshop with relevant stakeholders

Use our planning workshop template

Conduct peer analysis

Discuss plans with key departments

Remember about stakeholders

Set up a steering committee

Decide on internal reporting

Share far and wide

Run our planning workshop

A green, sustainable business model means that you are creating a net positive impact on our climate while making money (or being financed through donations). 

Identify areas of impact

Identify innovation opportunity spaces

Get external help

Your company creates a net positive impact on the climate while growing its business? Then this checkbox is for you.

Discover how Dark Horse is taking climate action

Dark Horse joined forces with hundreds of others to take immediate, collaborative, and transparent action to fight climate change.

Raising the bar on climate leadership