SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Sustainability has many faces.
We have been living sustainability for decades. In our daily work and actions, it is very important to us to protect the resources of our natural environment in the best possible way. We consider our social responsibility to go beyond environmental protection: in this respect, values associated with the greater good such as dignity, solidarity and justice are also a fixed part of the social values supported by Gunz.
Environmental protection
Human dignity
Solidarity
Justice
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
The key goal of environmental and climate protection is to conserve resources and encourage a conscious approach to nature. The goal of everyone is healthy ecology. With this shared goal in mind, we have invested in several sustainable measures in recent years. Our journey to the future is accompanied by consistent reflection. As such, new measures are added all the time.
Here are some of the measures we have already implemented:
- Conversion of all our lighting in Mäder (AT) and Magdeburg (GER) to LED → 80 percent saving in lighting energy
- Heating in Mäder (AT) with biogas produced at a local composting plant; conversion to a heat pump in 2022, as in Magdeburg (GER)
- Electrically-operated forklift truck; current conversion to energy-saving lithium-ion technology
- A photovoltaic power plant at our location in Mäder (AT) covers half of our requirement for energy, in Magdeburg (GER) twice as much; we only purchase green electricity; surpluses are fed into the public energy grid
- State-of-the-art stretch films to secure loads → avoidance of 100 tonnes of plastic waste per year
- We mainly organise our own transport services; this and other measures, such as the optimum utilisation of pallets, avoids thousands of HGV journeys
Common goal: Climate protection
We have been part of the “turn to zero” community for several years. Together with numerous other companies, we are pursuing the common goal of minimising greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite every effort, however, it is not possible to entirely prevent emissions of CO2. We therefore want to make additional important contributions to climate protection in a different way. In cooperation with “turn to zero”, we support high-quality, controlled and certified climate protection projects every year.
Most recently, we were able to support the following projects
We are very proud to participate in these excellent projects.
HUMAN DIGNITY & FAIRTRADE
We do not consider fair trade to be a marketing project, but part of our family philosophy.
Unfortunately, cocoa farming is the weakest link in the supply chain. We take the view that hard work of this kind should be fairly rewarded, however, so in 2017, we decided to enter into a partnership with Fairtrade Austria. At that time, we set ourselves the goal of switching our entire range of pralines and chocolates to Fairtrade cocoa. Two years later, it was time for us to take the next step: we converted 200 of our products, and 15 different suppliers across Europe were convinced by our decision. With the full conversion of our range of pralines and chocolates to Fairtrade cocoa, we therefore became the biggest partner of Fairtrade Austria in this area.
With the marketing of our products in more than 100 countries worldwide, the Fairtrade logo is shown on 40 million packets each year. In this way, many people hear about Fairtrade for the first time. We are pleased that Fairtrade recognises us as an important ambassador in this context.
We pay the additional costs of roughly 1 million euros per year. We do not want to pass the extra cost of our products onto our customers, though. We would much rather set an example in this area for a sense of responsibility and fairness.
SOLIDARITY & JUSTICE
Our Gunz Solidarity Fund is endowed with 100,000 euros per year. We primarily provide support to employees who find themselves in harsh personal circumstances. We donate the money that we don’t spend within our company to social welfare organisations.
One of our long-standing partners is the Schulheim Mäder, a day school and therapy centre for children who suffer from disabilities. We also support organisations in Vorarlberg which provide help to people and families in need.
We also donate products to the Vorarlberg organisation “Tischlein Deck Dich”, which distributes food to people in need at no cost.
