Our Path to CO2 Neutrality

According to experts, it takes around 80 mature beech trees to compensate one ton of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air every year. This calculation illustrates the benefit to nature that an emission saving of 219 tons of CO2 per year can achieve; such an achievement – equivalent to the capacity of 17,520 beech trees – has been accomplished by b&m in 2022. After all, in 2022 we were able to reduce the CCF (Company Carbon Footprint) substantially by 38 percent as compared to the previous year.

This latest milestone on the “b&m goes green” path is, as our “Environment and Resources Report 2022” points out, primarily a result of one major change: In the course of the “International Sustainability Program” (ISP) of our parent company Würth, b&m has succeeded for the first time in making externally purchased electricity from renewable energy sources CO2-neutral. “In addition”, says Steffen Redlingshöfer, Head of Quality and responsible for CSR, “by expanding the photovoltaic system on the building roofs at the company headquarters, we steadily increase the proportion of green electricity we generate ourselves for our own consumption – in the long term, the aim is to achieve 60 to 70 percent.” Other sites such as b&m China rely more and more on innovations such as parking lot PV systems.

Moreover, our internal b&m electricity-saving measures take effect. According to Steffen Redlingshöfer, they include, for example, the Home Office Friday and the Green Office Guidelines. “Within the framework of ISP, as a member of the Würth Group we strive to become completely CO2-neutral by 2025.” To achieve this, b&m works, among other things, on implementing a heating system based on geothermal energy as well as expanding the number of plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles within the company fleet. Redlingshöfer concludes: “Ambitious goals require ambitious measures. As b&m Group, we want to play a pioneering role in sustainable business operations.”