The changing compensation market requires companies to rethink their approach

In recent years, people’s growing awareness of climate change has led many companies to make voluntary efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and offset their emissions. This also applies to BESCO Berliner Steincontor GmbH. For years, we have been supporting a project in Uganda through the non-profit organization myClimate and offsetting all emissions generated during transport. In total, unavoidable emissions from more than 500 projects were offset in this way.

Due to new guidelines – laid down in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 by the global climate protection regulation and concretized by the Glasgow Climate Summit at the end of 2021 – the initiator is no longer automatically credited with offsetting services. In order to prevent double counting, each country in which the offsetting services are provided is now free to credit them to itself – an option that many countries gratefully make use of given the ambitious climate targets imposed individually on each of them.

BESCO’s contribution to climate protection

As a result of this change, BESCO Berliner Steincontor GmbH would like to take a more transparent approach in future. “As a company, it is very important to us to make a contribution to climate protection in a sustainable construction industry,” explains Managing Director Frank Dickmann. “From now on, we will be focusing more on reducing our direct emissions from our own sources and indirect emissions from energy consumption – in other words, Scopes 1 and 2. These are within our direct sphere of influence and therefore offer us the greatest possible control option,” he continues. Unavoidable emissions in these categories will therefore be carefully calculated by the company itself with immediate effect and offset as part of regional climate protection projects.

Plant-My-Tree® becomes new partner of BESCO Berliner Steincontor GmbH

The natural stone supplier’s new sustainability strategy is based on two pillars. On the one hand, greenhouse gases are to be deliberately avoided and, on the other, offset in cooperation with PLANT-MY-TREE®. Various projects are supported in order to secure the forest and tree population in Germany in the long term. Following reforestation, the company’s own areas are handed over to “PLANT-MY-TREE. The Foundation.” and are thus once again available to the general public.

492 trees will offset the emissions generated by BESCO Berliner Steincontor GmbH in 2022 and underline the company’s commitment to a climate-neutral future.
 

The future plants the future

At the recent tree planting in Bad Belzig, the company’s apprentices were also able to lend a hand. A total of 2,000 trees, including red oaks and Scots pines, were planted here in all weathers – “a very fulfilling and varied task”, as the first and third-year apprentices felt.

“We can now look positively into the future and say that our company is climate-neutral by offsetting direct greenhouse gas emissions and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard, based on the business activities of the company site in Germany and all employees belonging to the company for the year 2022,” explains Carl Duhn, Commercial Director at BESCO. “This feels very good and sets another milestone.”