Environmental Sustainability

We already achieved one of our most important goals: Since the beginning of 2023, we have only purchased electricity from renewable sources for our sites worldwide. We only consider electricity generated from solar, wind or hydro sources to be renewable. We take a local market approach to procurement, preferring direct contracts to the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). We also already produce our own solar power at various locations around the world.

In the U.S., we have joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Green Power Partnership program. The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that helps increase the use of green power among U.S. organizations to promote the U.S. market for green power and the development of these sources to reduce air pollution and other environmental impacts associated with electricity use.

Our warehouses offer great potential for generating our own solar energy. Currently, 19 photovoltaic systems are already in operation at our sites worldwide. In addition, further projects are at various stages of the planning phase.

The demand for energy (electricity and heating energy) in warehouses is rising, especially with increasing automation. Energy-efficient action therefore means acting in a way that conserves resources. We reduce our consumption by installing LED lighting as standard or using motion detectors in our offices and warehouses. Other ways to reduce energy consumption include better insulation of the premises and intelligent control of heating energy in the most heavily used areas of the warehouse. Using waste heat from our automation solutions for heating is also an important topic we are currently looking at.

The decision to construct a new building is accompanied by various challenges in terms of sustainability. For this reason, we have defined in an internal Arvato "Sustainable Building Policy" which building standards we are committed to in order to be able to achieve the climate-neutral operation of a distribution center. Internationally recognized certifications such as LEED, DGNB or BREEAM underscore this approach. Sites already certified or in the certification process are now located in Austria, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the USA.

To continuously make logistics site operations more environmentally friendly, some of our distribution centers have already implemented ISO 14001 (environmental management). Further sites are in the planning stage.

The basis for effective climate protection is transparency regarding all relevant direct and indirect emission sources as well as sound analysis and reporting. Since fiscal 2017, data collection and climate accounting has been carried out across all sites with the help of our 'green.screen' energy and environmental platform. It is also the backbone of our annual environmental data analysis, in which more than 100 employees worldwide participate. As we include more and more detailed data points in our analyses, we are continuously developing emissions transparency and accounting options within the platform.