Good for the environment and the company
The overarching goal of the Bundesdruckerei Group is to continuously improve environmental and climate protection as well as energy efficiency throughout the value chain. At the same time, we are creating a healthy and supportive working environment for our employees. Find out more about the Bundesdruckerei Group’s integrated environmental management system.
Six examples of our sustainability management
The Bundesdruckerei Group is particularly committed to saving resources, not just energy, water and fuel, but also paper, ink and other materials. That’s because we want to protect the climate. But we also have to reduce costs and work efficiently. At the same time, we take a holistic view of sustainability, focusing on our corporate responsibility in the areas of environment, social affairs and corporate governance.
Außerdem legen wir großen Wert darauf, unsere Mitarbeiter bei ihrer persönlichen Entwicklung zu unterstützen und ihnen ein familienfreundliches Arbeitsumfeld zu bieten.
We have set ourselves some ambitious goals. We analyze our consumption, identify potential for savings and define the correct measures. The management systems we use check our approaches each year and also undergo annual audits conducted by external bodies. What’s more, we are particularly committed to supporting our employees in their personal development and offering them a family-friendly working environment. The next section presents six exemplary topics from our current report on the German Sustainability Code (2020).
100 percent green electricity
We need a lot of electricity to run our production facilities and server infrastructure. In 2020, Bundesdruckerei GmbH and D-Trust alone consumed around 23.5 gigawatt-hours of electricity – that’s as much as a small town with a population of less than 17,000 uses in a year.
To protect the climate and the environment, we are working hard to keep electricity consumption stable while increasing sales. We are also using electricity from renewable sources, i.e. from solar, hydro and wind power. We do not use any electricity from nuclear power stations or power generated using coal, oil or natural gas.
It goes without saying that we are determined to improve ourselves further. Thanks to an efficient environmental and energy management system, we can identify the reasons for rising consumption and respond accordingly.
Less energy consumption
We aim to reduce our energy consumption while increasing sales. For that we need to know exactly how much energy we are using and what for. This is why our energy management system has been certified according to ISO 50001 since 2014.
Among other things, we monitor consumption using energy meters and systematically evaluate the results. Our production systems and building services, especially air-handling and machine operation, offer the greatest potential for saving energy. By investing in smart systems and energy-efficient production technology, we are determined to reduce electricity consumption even further.
Our environmental and energy management systems are audited each year. This means that we are continuously improving ourselves and thus also our ability to develop suitable concepts to further optimize performance. Over the coming years, we will include more Group subsidiaries in the corresponding management systems.
Climate neutrality
CO2 emissions are primarily responsible for global warming and climate change. These emissions come from burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas or also coal, for instance, in order to heat buildings or enable mobility.
As a Federal Government company, the Bundesdruckerei Group is committed to its social responsibility to protect climate and the environment and to operate in a sustainable manner. However, due to the company’s energy-intensive production processes, it is not possible for us to avoid carbon emissions entirely. That’s why we are involved in the climate protection project entitled ‘Efficient cookstoves for sustainable development’ run by Klima ohne Grenzen Projekt gGmbH. This participation enabled the Group to offset 5,272 metric tons of unavoidable carbon emissions in 2020, making the Group’s operations climate-neutral for the first time.
We report our greenhouse gas emissions annually according to the principles of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. In order to keep emissions stable, we can make improvements, particularly in the procurement of heat for the Bundesdruckerei Group. We are also developing a concept for alternative mobility for all employees. Since 2011, total emissions by Bundesdruckerei GmbH, D-Trust and Maurer Electronics have been cut by approximately two thirds.
Protecting employees from hazards
We use chemicals to manufacture our products and to maintain our plants. Some of these chemicals are hazardous substances, i.e. they can harm people and the environment. It is our duty to keep the risk to our employees as low as possible and to protect their health and also our environment. We protect our employees by providing regular training and information on how to handle hazardous substances and through risk assessments.
That is why we check the hazardous properties of substances or mixtures even before they are used, we study the manufacturer’s instructions and observe precisely when, where and to what extent our employees are exposed to hazardous substances.
Our aim is to replace as many of these hazardous substances as possible with alternatives that are less harmful to health and the environment.
Our employees’ length of service
For many employees, Bundesdruckerei has been their professional home for decades – at the same time, we are always happy to welcome many new colleagues. The loyalty of our employees is expressed in an average length of service of more than eleven years. In 2020, this totalled 10.7 years.
Compliance with all German and European labour law regulations as well as the labour law standards of the United Nations, the International Labour Organization, the OECD and the UN Global Compact is a matter of course for us. We have concluded company agreements with the employee representatives regarding social conduct at the workplace, the integration of severely disabled persons or company integration management that go far beyond the required legal standards. We conduct regular surveys and use various instruments of personnel development, such as regular performance reviews, to promote our employees individually. In addition, a comprehensive health performance management (HPM) was introduced in 2020 with measures geared to achieve the strategic goal of securing performance and work motivation.
We want to continue with HPM, which is anchored as a cross-cutting theme, and pursue further the implementation of measures for personnel development along the lines of changing employment and health biographies. Consideration is also given to the focus topics from the annual staff survey.
Professional development and lifelong learning
We actively support the professional development of our employees. We want to maintain and improve the skills of our employees with flexible and individually tailored training opportunities.
We offer a wide range of eLearning courses that employees can use as required and at the time of their choosing. This allows our employees to deepen their knowledge on topics such as leadership or the secure and responsible handling of sensitive data on the Internet. By offering a vast range of starting points in various specialist and cross-sectional areas, young professionals can develop their full potential. Our employees can opt for a specialist or management career path. We actively support our employees in their further training, for instance, by providing financial support for extra-occupational studies, time off for educational purposes or scholarships.
We regularly evaluate our training and development schemes and align them with the current topics and work priorities of our employees. Our aim is to further strengthen lifelong learning with the help of support programs, tailored training and professional development and by providing various free and paid digital offers.
Environmental management at the Bundesdruckerei Group
For many years now, the company has complied with the requirements of the environmental management standard DIN EN ISO 14001. Embedded in an integrated system, industrial safety and health protection have been successfully confirmed according to DIN ISO 45001 and energy management according to DIN EN ISO 50001.
German Sustainability Code
Since 2012, the Bundesdruckerei Group has been committed to the German Sustainability Code (DNK). This code makes the company's contribution to the environment, the economy and society both transparent and comparable. By signing the related declaration, the company group declares that it accepts all the criteria that help to ensure entrepreneurial sustainability, for instance, greater use of natural resources.
Declaration by the Bundesdruckerei Group on the German Sustainability Code (2022).
Sustainable corporate management – worldwide
The Bundesdruckerei Group has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2021. With its accession, the group has committed to integrating the ten principles of the UN Global Compact for human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and fighting corruption into its business strategy, corporate culture and day-to-day operation.
The UN Global Compact is the world’s biggest and most important initiative for companies that seek to make sustainability a central strategic goal and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The SDGs have been shaping the debate around sustainability since 2015, and provide a set of global targets for a joint effort to overcome the challenges of the 21st century.