The term "sustainability" is on everyone's lips. But can you give an exact definition? Hardly anyone is able to do that. And we certainly can't. Before we started calculating our emissions, however, we first wanted to put the issue into context. Therefore, we refer to the term sustainable development, which emerged in the context of the Brundtland Report of the United Nations, as a way of life that does not limit the opportunities of future generations. In the course of time, three pillars of sustainability have developed, on the basis of which sustainable goals are pursued: environmental, economic and social sustainability.
One step at a time: We'll tackle the environmental pillar first. As a small company, this is where we can act most quickly and efficiently. For us, this means that we want to offer connectivity in such a way that as few emissions as possible are produced, which pollute the environment.
The first step is to know our carbon footprint – in other words, the amount of emissions generated by our company's activities. In common calculations, three different "scopes" are assumed: Scope 1 refers to emissions caused by business activities directly, while scopes 2 and 3 refer to emissions that occur indirectly. As a provider of mobile Internet, our emissions are mainly assigned to the latter two scopes.
To be precise, our carbon footprint includes what is emitted by our operational activities. When you browse the internet and binge-watch a series on Netflix, we count that as your emissions, not ours. Since our subscriptions run on the Sunrise network, the emissions generated by the network infrastructure are already compensated by Sunrise's ambitious activities. We include the following in our ecological footprint:
- our electricity consumption and the required heating energy
- the commute of the whole team
- the daily meals of all employees
- the waste produced
- the material used, such as SIM cards, envelopes and flyers
- the distribution of our SIM cards
- the operation of our servers
- other emissions associated with the purchase of products and services
After taking all these factors into account, we were finally able to determine the number of tons of CO2 that we produce each year. ... So what next?