Prima Klima BDKH!
As an association of major manufacturers in the field of children’s products, the BDKH is committed to keeping its ecological footprint as small as possible and to act in a climate-friendly way. The ‘Prima Klima BDKH!’ campaign, launched in 2020, covers various actions taken by the Association and its individual member companies to reduce CO2 emissions.
The first such action, for example, was an announcement by the Board that all future BDKH events should be climate neutral. Since travel is the greatest threat to the climate, we request our members avoid travelling to our events by air or private car wherever possible. Compensatory payments are made by the BDKH to offset the residual CO2 footprint. The relevant details are collated at our meetings.
As a supplement to the Code of Conduct, a list of climate-friendly actions has been drawn up. From this list we have selected ten ideas, requesting that each member company make a binding commitment to at least two of these for the coming year. The list covers the following actions:
OUR CLIMATE LIST
Towards sustainability, step by step
- Subsidising use of public transport and offering railcards (BahnCard50 or BahnCard25) to employees, or offering company bikes
- Use of green electricity from a certified supplier (‘Grüner Strom’ or ‘ok-power’ label)
- Attaching a power-saving advice label to devices/appliances > switch off at end of day instead of switching to standby, unplug charging cables after use, switch off wi-fi where possible
- Taking part in a 1-day BDKH workshop on the topic of company sustainability strategies
- Nominating a climate officer for the company who would spend about one day a month researching and sharing information on options for climate-friendly action
- Dropping plastic bottles/takeaway cups/plates/cutlery in favour of reusable items
- Using an ethical bank that employs its capital to promote social projects, climate protection and the expansion of renewable energy (e.g. GLS Bank, Umweltbank, Triodos, Ethikbank, Steyler Bank)
- Offsetting CO2 with payments to funds such as Klima Kollekte, Arktik, Atmosfair, Klimamanufaktur, Myclimate, Primaklima
- Calculating the CO2 footprint of at least one product (gate-to-gate calculation from delivery of raw materials to delivery of finished product)
- Planting roofs and walls, for instance with mosses (e.g. Greencity Solutions > www.greencitysolutions.de (with or without IoT)
Many of our companies have already launched activities to improve sustainability and climate-friendliness.
In November 2020, the Association also organised a 1½-day virtual workshop on developing a sustainability strategy for companies in our industry, with experts from Etika and SGS and various accompanying presentations on examples of best practice.
Together with the speakers, we are in the process of creating a budget-conscious offer for our members who wish to develop a sustainability strategy. This will consist either of modules that can be booked individually or of weekly advice from the help desk over the course of an entire year.
