Our pro bono client is an international rights based organization that helps people build better futures for themselves, hold the powerful accountable, and save lives in disasters. One may wonder: Why is ecological sustainability important for such an organization?
First, they know that reducing emissions is a global challenge, and all countries and organizations are accountable for significantly reducing emissions. Second, the people that the organization works with are directly affected by climate change. Natural disasters such as floods, storms and droughts destroy crops and human living space, while diseases favored by rising temperatures spread faster. Consequently, our pro bono client – the German chapter of this international network – has set the goal of keeping its internal ecological footprint as small as possible.
We staffed the project team and rolled up our sleeves in early summer 2021. We are accompanying our pro bono client on its sustainability journey:
As a first step, we came together in workshops with the client’s project team to align our working routines and ensure we had the needed compliance checks. We defined a baseline year – on this basis, a CO2 reduction target will be formulated. To get a detailed view of the current data situation, we used one workshop to gather all the information to ensure straightforward data collection. We focused on:
We clarified that current emissions arise primarily in and around the organization’s operations to finance the aid projects. Fortunately, the client had already collected relevant input data; still, we were asked to challenge the completeness of the data (dimensions and sub-dimensions) and share ideas on how the quality of existing emission data could be enhanced.
Now we can start to get “operational”. The existing data sets were handed over and screened, from plane connection information and location-based energy consumption to volunteer commute information.
We are currently consolidating the data in one central input sheet and ensuring that the data can be used to feed our Emission Calculator. Yet, not all data is already available for processing. Here, in cooperation with specialist departments, options to collect data will further be identified and assessed. We know that there are some instances (for example, IT usage) where data cannot be collected directly. Then, reasonable assumptions will be derived (we will refer to publicly available average user statistics). For consistent future reporting, the assumptions will be documented, and we define a data flow accounting for sources, formats and responsible persons and timelines.
There are already plans for follow-up projects. For example, we were asked to develop a strategy containing measures to achieve the emissions target.
An exciting aspect of this particular project is that our pro bono client is not only causing emissions but advocates for and actually has a circular economy approach in place: they sell used products for re-use. The revenues are a source to fund their actual projects around the globe. Re-using items is vital for a sustainable business model since producing new items always comes with emissions for raw material sourcing, production, and distribution. Together with our client, we will work on a model to compare CO2 emissions and re-use emission savings. Also, the environmental reporting can be extended by showing that the business model avoids other types of negative externalities (it reduces waste and microplastics, water consumed, and chemical use).