Footprint

Our footprint in the first half year of 2023 was 15,5ton CO₂. Our footprint in the first half year of 2022 was 14,8ton CO₂. This means compared to last year, we experienced an increase in our semi-annual footprint by 0,7 ton CO₂. The second half year of 2022, our footprint was 13,3ton CO₂, so compared to that time frame we’ve also been showing an increase of 2,2ton CO₂. So you may wonder what happened?

Actually, we’ve been showing great progress in our reduction efforts when it comes to commuting. In the first half year of 2022, our commuting footprint was very low, namely 0,402 ton CO₂, while in the second half year of 2022 it went up to 2,31 ton CO₂. This can be explained due to the covid circumstances. We managed to reduce our footprint this past half year to 1,07 ton CO₂; showing an incredible decrease of 1,24. Our efforts for reducing our fuel and heat remained the same resulting in emissions of 3,14 ton CO₂ per half a year.

The culprit this first half year of 2023 was business trips that had to be done by airplane. This resulted in an increase in emissions when it came to business related travel of 4,66 ton CO₂; bringing it to a total of 5,97 ton CO₂. Luckily, we showed progress in all other areas when it came to reducing our footprint.

The coming half year, we’ll therefore focus on reducing our footprint even more and especially try to find alternatives to flying.

Events

On the 22nd of March, our CO₂ representative Shirley Voermans attended a workshop session ‘From CO2 ambition to CO2 action’ to get more inspiration on what we can do to reduce our footprint even more. In addition, we attended the workshop 'Circular solution for corporate waste' this first half year. 

Measures

Every year, we introduce new measures and ways to reduce our emissions. In 2023, we altered some of our already existing measures and added some new ones:

• As of this year, we’re reducing the availability of parking spaces offered to staff members. Parking spaces are only offered to employees who need to travel more than 10 km from home to work and cannot travel by public transport - require a car for the performance of their duties
• Our preferred mode of travel has always been train over airplane, but as of this year we’ve put it as an official measure; we now require travel by train for distances less than 700 km, provided that travel by train from door to door takes less than 150% of the time if travelling by plane. It used to be for distances less than 500 km, but we changed to 700 km.

By introducing these new alterations, we hope to reduce our footprint even more the coming half year; especially focusing on reducing the amount of travel related trips by airplane.