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.

Expand your area of action

Embed sustainability in your business model

Set your case

Identify purpose and audience

Look through existing reports

checkApplicabilityOfEsgRelatedRegulationExampleCsrd

Check if regulations apply to you

Pick a fitting framework

Choose your format  

Conduct materiality assessment

Share data on environmental issues

Share data on material ESG issues

Select and organize your data

Cover the disclosure requirement from your framework

Ensure transparency, accuracy, and authenticity

Communicate

Make it readable

Connect with peers

Report on your sustainability and ESG performance

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

Engage your stakeholders

Understand context (AR 9a)

Identify actual and potential impacts

Assess materiality (AR 9c) 

Determine severity

Connect impacts to your company

Assess financial materiality

Incorporate sustainability matters

Document and report

Run a double materiality assessment (DMA)

Decide if you would like to set up a formal EMS

Secure buy-in from leadership

Tailor to your needs

Create content

Keep your policy updated

Share publicly

Share with new employees

Circulate with suppliers and customers

Develop an environmental policy

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

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

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

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 Munich Electrification GmbH is taking climate action

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

Raising the bar on climate leadership