You can't manage what you can't measure. To be able to reduce your carbon footprint you first have to measure it. By compensating for the full footprint, you help to decrease the damage that your emissions are causing.

Requirements*
Measured the carbon footprint of your company on a basic scope
Offset your carbon emissions for the last year
Verification of your offsetting certificate through LFCA

A range of easy measurements to reduce your carbon footprint and set a good example for your team of how to use resources sparingly

Requirements*
Proper waste separation system
Minimal printing policy
Eco-friendly office supplies: paper, post-its, pens, business cards, etc.
Conscious office cleaning: eco-friendly cleaning products, minimal bins and plastic bags
Responsible food and drink: local, organic, seasonal
Responsible use of office equipment and furniture
Minimal giveaways: t-shirts, flyers, stickers, etc.
Minimal plastic waste: no plastic cups and bottles, reduced food delivery waste
Water conservation

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

Requirements*
Trains over planes policy
Economy class flights only

Meat and dairy consumption cause a lot of carbon emissions. Minimizing carbon-intensive food and drinks decreases a company's carbon footprint significantly.

Requirements*
Vegan catering and snacks

Supporting major Climate Demo's e.g. of the Fridays for Future movement, helps to increase the pressure on politicians.

Requirements*
Give your employees free time to go on big climate demo's
Spread the news about important climate demo's

Mark as done to participate

Join the Teams Challenge

Join our Time for Climate Action campaign

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

By supporting the Climate Demo's of the Fridays for Future movement, you can help to increase the pressure on politicians. Many big companies like Atlassian, Flixbus, Kickstarter and many more do it already. Join them! 

Give your employees a few free hours or half a day off to go to important climate strikes.

Share it on on social media 

Use your Marketing channels and social media reach to support big climate demonstrations.

Participate as a team

Use existing toolkits 

Make yourself visible 

Actively support climate strikes

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

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

Talk to your hosting company

Power your digital infrastructure using 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).


Discover how COOLTRA is taking climate action

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

Raising the bar on climate leadership