We act responsibly, our sights firmly set on the future. This is why we have made sustainability one of our company’s defined values and are tackling the issue strategically and holistically.

For more information visit: https://sustainability.axelspringer.com/en/ 

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

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

Collect key benefits and examples to convince others 

Prepare your first steps

Decide on structure

Set clear outcomes for the first meeting

Get your leadership team on board

Assign key roles

Decide on a meeting rhythm

 Ask for help

Start acting

Make a plan, but stay flexible

communicateProactivelyToKeepMotivationHigh

Communicate proactively to keep motivation high

Start at the very beginning

 Set up a green team

Collect examples and benefits to convince others

Check if you are ready

Think beyond decarbonization

Secure support to embed your plan within business strategy

Run our planning workshop

Fill out our climate transition plan template

Realise it is an iterative process

Publish your plan

Develop and publish a climate transition plan

Decide on what metrics and data to collect

Invest in reporting software

Keep an eye out for future reporting requirements

Describe how climate is a material topic for your company

Disclose your yearly emissions

Disclose your targets 

Report concrete actions that have been taken to reduce your emissions

Share your broader activities in society

Have your reporting audited by a third party

Embed your climate disclosure in a relevant sustainability framework

Communicate your progress real-time

Consider reporting emissions and progress to the CDP

Publish your report externally

Report annually on your decarbonization progress

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

Collect benefits to convince others 

Check out our issue-specific guide

Decide on methodology

Define your boundaries

Find the right partner

Gather data

Identify main Scope 3 categories

Update your inventory annually

Document and communicate publicly

Measure your emissions across Scopes 1-3

Axel Springer

If you want to find out what donation options are available to support LFCA, contact Philippe philippe@lfca.earth

Donate to LFCA

Examples for climate non profits can be found here

Donate to some other climate non-profit

Donate to charities fighting climate change

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

Secure leadership buy-in

Review robustness criteria

Consider declaring an emergency

Join the Race to Zero campaign through a partner organisation

Don’t stop there – embrace a net positive mindset!

Share your commitment

Publicly commit to the 1.5°C ambition

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

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

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. 

Discover how Axel Springer is taking climate action

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

Raising the bar on climate leadership