Sustainability Report 2020: Interview with Edith Albert-Denifl, Head of Central Administration & Facility Management

What are the main drivers of your carbon footprint?

Edith: When we calculated our carbon footprint, we discovered that more than half of our greenhouse gas emissions came from employee mobility. Namely flights and travel to and from work by employees. Electricity, print products and catering are also responsible for a large percentage of our greenhouse gas emissions.

What are your plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Edith: We have prepared an action plan which contains numerous measures for our goal to be climate-neutral by 2025. These range from avoiding flights for business trips to climate-neutral printing to vegetarian lunches in our canteen three times a week. We have already lowered our greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in 2019 compared to 2018, mainly by reducing our energy consumption and switching to green electricity.

What role does the new office building in Berlin play with regard to the sustainability targets?

Edith: As we have reduced our energy consumption, the carbon footprint of the building is extremely small compared to other modern office buildings. The office gives us countless ways to conserve resources, be it automatic lights with motion sensors or doing away with plastic bottles as we now use water dispensers exclusively. Another sustainable benefit is that Scouts can take public transport to work with no problems as we are situated right next to the main station.

For more info, please check out our sustainability report 2020 here.