Environmental management/sustainable banking

Responsibility for climate and environmental protection

Environmental management is a key element of DekaBank's sustainability strategy. Corporate responsibility for environmental and climate protection are factors that also affect the competitiveness and future success of our company. Our targeted measures contribute to sustainable banking, and thus also to global climate protection, and reduce the negative impact of our business operations on the environment. At the same time, we are also reducing our resource consumption costs.

At the operating level, the “IdeasComplaintsEnvironmental Management” unit headed by the Environmental Officer is responsible for environmental management. The unit coordinates and is in charge of initiating and implementing environmental protection measures in the different business divisions in order to improve resource efficiency.

To harmonise the financial targets of the company with ecological requirements and regulations, we strive to actively involve our employees and our business partners in the environmental management process. Together, we work on finding sustainable solutions to conserve natural resources, promote social progress and save costs as well.

Environmental management system under ISO 14001

Our environmental management system delivers an annual corporate environmental balance sheet. The balance sheet is used to systematically evaluate the environmental impact of DekaBank and identify areas of action and optimisation potential on the basis of comparisons with previous years. This system was first certified in compliance with DIN EN ISO 14001 in 2009 and through it, we are committed to continuous improvement and annual monitoring audits, which are conducted by independent third parties.
Naturally, continuous improvements can only be achieved through concrete initiatives. For example, we have been exclusively using vehicles powered by natural gas for our couriers since July 2010, which has significantly reduced our fuel consumption.
Our efforts are also proving successful in the Bank’s offices, where instead of 80g paper, we are now using 75g paper. This paper is also FSC-certified, which means that the fibres used to produce the paper were processed from resource-conserving, sustainably managed forests. We now also use certified paper for our printed publications, letterhead and staff business cards. Please see our Environmental Report and Sustainability Report for more examples of our successful environmental management initiatives. DekaBank has also adopted an environmental policy (environmental guidelines).

Procurement management

In procurement management, we introduced a sustainability appendix at the start of 2011. This specifies rules of conduct that apply to both DekaBank and its contractors. This code of conduct is based on a series of international conventions and voluntary obligations, such as the ILO Convention and the UN Global Compact, and obliges contractors to comply with a number of social and environmental standards. These include giving preference to suppliers who also have a certified environmental management system. For further details, please see the sustainability appendix

Carbon disclosure project and water disclosure project

In addition to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which we have been supporting since 2005, we joined the Water Disclosure Project (WDP) as a signatory investor in May 2010. The WDP supplements the CDP with water data. Both projects aim to create transparency with regard to how companies deal with natural resources. To this end, data and information on CO2 emissions, climate risks, water consumption and reduction targets are collected and published on an annual basis.