Climate-neutral mobility at VAUDE

When it comes to business, mobility is a given; employees commute to work and go on business trips, our products are transported from production facilities to our logistics center and from there to our customers. Mobility is the source of a large percentage of emissions in our globalized world. We have set ourselves the goal of continuing to reduce emissions from transportation and travel.

All emissions generated by VAUDE are calculated by the myclimate organization. This helps us to not only create transparency of the source of emissions in our carbon footprint, but also forms the foundation we use to offset all unavoidable emissions. With our climate compensation payments, we finance projects that reduce emissions to the same extent that we produce them. This makes our climate balance neutral – see "Climate neutral at the company headquarters in Obereisenbach".

Business travel and commuting are responsible for almost half of emissions in the VAUDE carbon footprint. In Germany, one quarter of all energy consumption is due to personal and goods transport.

All the experts are in agreement: our mobility needs to become more eco-friendly. To achieve this, a change of mindset is necessary for our society – for each one of us, for companies, communities and in politics. Creative ideas on how we can maintain our mobility with the help of technology – and without a large loss in convenience – are called for. Networking is the magic word: combining various transportation methods for separate legs of travel and (financial) incentives to support a change in behavior to less single-vehicle commuting.

We therefore have a great need for action in this area for finding effective measures to reduce our emissions. The VAUDE mobility concept is comprised of six components:

1. Bike commuting: VAUDE has an annual target for bike commuting - see "Bike commuting"
   
2. Private carpooling, including in cooperation with the flinc.org social mobility network
   
3. Carpooling with VAUDE fleet vehicles: VAUDE has made two large company cars available for larger carpool groups.
   
4. Public transportation (ÖPNV): improvement of the shuttle service to Obereisenbach – see "Creating added value through commitment"
   
5. Travel guidelines for business travel – see "Fewer emissions from business travel"
   
6. Fleet management – see "Fewer emissions from business travel"
   

Our goal is to reduce the number of vehicles in our company fleet, to transition to low-emission vehicles and to use driver training to achieve even more fuel-saving driving habits. Details on fuel consumption can be found here

For the issue of business travel, it’s also all about avoiding emissions. The VAUDE Travel Policy Guidelines are helping us – see "Fewer emissions from business travel"

Due to our remote location in Obereisenbach, most employees have to commute to work. Our goal remains to significantly reduce our emissions from commuting. You can read here about how far we’ve come.

Those who arrive at work by means of environmentally friendly commuting will – with a little luck – be rewarded:

All employees who do not commute alone by car are eligible for a weekly prize drawing.

The distance that our products cover once they leave the manufacturing facilities and until they finally reach the hand of the customer is quite a long one. Still, each product individually is accountable for only a very small proportion of emissions. The majority of our products are manufactured in Asia and transported by container ship to Hamburg.

From here they travel by rail to Ulm, and then are driven by truck to our logistics center in Obereisenbach. While marine and rail transportation create a very low level of emissions and thus are ecologically sensible, transport by truck and air are emission-intensive. Therefore, we try to avoid not only airfreight, but also truck deliveries as well, whenever possible - see "Emissions compensation".

Transport is also necessary to deliver our products to our customers, the retailers, and to import materials and consumables for our company headquarters in Obereisenbach.