9. August 2024
Matthias Wagener
In the format “A Day in the Life of”, find out from Jenny, Project Manager & responsible for international affairs at VAST FORWARD, what her typical day looks like and how she meets the challenges of working remotely.
Let’s go:
In our capitalist market economy, we as a company are in constant competition. Climate change and the growing environmental awareness of consumers are increasing the pressure to act more sustainably. Regardless, CO2 compensation often seems like an easy way out. Companies offset their emissions by purchasing certificates without having to fundamentally change production or supply chains.
This is exactly where a key issue lies. CO2 compensation tempts companies to choose the quick and easy path rather than addressing actual causes of the problem. There is a risk that companies merely obtain a “green image” through the purchase of such certificates without actually becoming more sustainable – this is the practice of greenwashing, the shortcut.
The EU’s Greenwashing Law aims to address this by banning misleading environmental claims and ambiguous sustainability labels. Therefore, it is important to keep emphasising that compensation cannot and should not be the sole path to sustainability. It remains too easy to hide companies’ unsustainable behaviour behind the fig leaf of compensation.
We are convinced that real sustainability requires real change – and that it is a journey, a continuous development. We started to rethink products and processes from the roots, developing more sustainable approaches to our use of technology, and investing not solely in ecological directions. We want to continue to take responsibility as a whole team and support long-term solutions rather than relying on short-term measures or the often-described greenwashing.
Our strategy, the foundation of our sustainability initiative VAST GREEN, stipulates that we think and disseminate our efforts beyond the boundaries of our company – to share our path, errors, and successes, to spark conversations, and ideally to inspire others with our enthusiasm. We do not want to “simply” compensate for our carbon footprint with a certificate, and the measures we know of are still too often not transparent enough – or they take place where we as individuals cannot actively engage. This kind of impact seems small and ineffective to us.
We all see important developments in our society that influence our collective future and are closely tied to transparency and information. So, after collaborating for two years with partner companies like Spenoki/Code Gaya and Wilderness International, our entire team decided to relocate our compensation equivalent in 2024: we will donate to the non-profit organisation “Correctiv.” Correctiv is an investigative team having researched and published on important topic like the CumEx tax scandal, the AfD donation scandal, and rising rents in the housing market. Secondly, we will donate to the Bärenherz Children’s Hospice in Leipzig.
The decision to pause our partnership with Spenoki/Code Gaya was made due to the realisation that our emissions as a small team barely change. The experiences and insights of the last few years show that the value of around 60 tons (assuming we don’t significantly change our behaviour – which is not planned 😉) remains stable. Our approach, therefore, is to estimate 100 tons of annual emissions and split the monetary equivalent between Correctiv and Bärenherz.
Even though this may not seem typical for a “sustainability donation”: Sole compensation payments, without transparency, without the sharing of information, there will be no more sustainable future in our world of “alternative truths” about climate change and the necessary steps in society and the economy. We look forward to continuing to decide together as a team how we can use our “compensation” effectively. On top of that, we will continue to work on the further development of our small organisation – our sustainability journey VAST GREEN continues.
