1. Sweeping around your own front door
When talking about sustainability, you should obviously talk about yourself first. For us, this means in practical terms: We talk openly and regularly about things that we note during our office routines and that could be improved. These mainly involve petty little things, such as separating waste correctly, switching to green electricity, fully loading the dishwasher before running it, or using cloth towels rather than paper towels. So, for what it’s worth, we are making progress one baby step at a time, urging every staff member to develop awareness for these environmental concerns.

2.  Community engagement
In addition to things involving environmental protection that we implement in-house, the social aspect of sustainability also plays a major role for us. For starters, we have been sponsoring the continued professional development of our in-house staff for years, thereby investing in both their and our own future. We also welcome the community engagement of each staff member – for instance by supporting one of our employees who volunteered to help to teach school children in Tanzania for a month.

Since we care deeply about the promotion of young talent and embrace the idea of investing in our collective future, our agency has been a member of the Humboldt University Society, which does an outstanding job supporting young talents, for some time now.

Another aspect of our community engagement is reflected in our advent calendar that will be gifted to each of our employees this year: True to its tell-tale name, the Advent Calendar of 24 Good Deeds hides a good deed behind each of its little doors. These are 24 different projects in the areas of environment, education and healthcare that we support with a donation on the respective day. Learn more.

3. Making a difference in print
No communication agency can steer completely clear of printed matter. But you can make your printing matter – the way we do. In-house, we only print out things anymore if we absolutely have to, whereas external print jobs use a sustainable print process. The print production includes CO2 compensation and FSG certified natural paper. We also aim for carbon dioxide reductions in other areas as we strive to minimise our ecological footprint. Do you know your carbon footprint?

4. ESG in the real estate industry
Unwilling to limit our sustainability commitment to our own premises, we decided to play an active part in the new ESG conference of the FondsForum property fund platform. What prompted the decision was the new significance that the ESG subject attained in the real estate industry last year, causing sustainability aspects to play a major role for a growing number of companies. The ways in which property and fund companies may integrate ESG aspects in future, which impact ESG aspects will have on returns, which requirements will be of relevance in the future and many others topics all made us keen to know more, which is why we will attend the event in Frankfurt on 20 February 2020. Perhaps we will see you there! Click here for more details.

5. Digitisation should be sustainable 
Of course, our clients will also get to benefit from the new insights we acquired. We are already working on a white paper to gather relevant sustainability topics for our investment fund clients. How well does sustainability interact with digitisation? Or is digitisation actually one of the factors enabling a qualified sustainability approach? How and in which kind of properties will we invest in tomorrow? What can I do on my own, and what do I need partners for? These and other question are keeping us busy at the moment, and we will soon present all the right answers to you.