Employees commute to work and go on business trips; 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 stemming from transportation and travel.
Business travel and commuting are responsible for a significant amount of emissions in the VAUDE climate footprint. One third of all energy consumption in Germany is due to personal and goods transport. More information from the Federal Environment Agency can be found here.
Even though the Corona pandemic significantly diminished the transportation sector (with great benefits for the environment), experts still agree that our transport 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. (Digital) 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 individual car traffic.
All emissions generated by VAUDE are calculated by myclimate. This helps us to not only create transparency of the source of emissions in our climate 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 VAUDE Climate Footprint.
Nevertheless, VAUDE also has a need for action in this area to reduce the impact of transportation on people and the planet.
Since 2010, we have been working intensively on work-related mobility and business travel. We have already implemented a number of measures.
Overall, we have already reduced our emissions by a great deal. But we are still a long way from reaching our goal. By 2024, we want to reduce emissions from employee mobility by another 25 % compared with 2019.
Due to our rural location, most employees have to commute longer distances to work. We can't “force” anyone to give up their car. But we can provide incentives. How we do this is explained here. Our goal remains to significantly reduce emissions from commuting. Read here to find out how far we have come.
Even the very best mobility concept can’t actually reduce emissions – it has to be put into practice. For years now, VAUDE has had a Mobility Lottery to motivate as many employees as possible to leave their cars at home.
Each week our trainees give away a weekly prize to one of our employees who didn’t commute to work by car. In order to be eligible, employees have to use eco-friendly transport for their commute (bike, e-bike, carpooling or the bus) and then sign up on a simple Excel list in the VAUDE intranet. This list also serves to measure the distance spent commuting by other means than in one’s own car.
Our employees enjoy winning prizes such as restaurant coupons, vegetarian cookbooks, bike accessories and even electricity measuring devices for home use. And it also ensures that “environmentally friendly and cost saving commuting” remains a topic of conversation in our offices.
Our mobility lottery is a simple but effective measure for raising awareness on the vital issue of transport among our employees.
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