Germany: SIK-Holz Is Now Climate-Neutral

The German playground equipment manufacturer SIK-Holz is now a climate-neutral company in accordance with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol adopted by the United Nations in 1997. SIK-Holz had commissioned the Fokus Zukunft company to determine its annual greenhouse gas emissions; with an emission of 568 tons of CO2-equivalent contaminants per year (or 2.47 tons of CO2 per employee and year), the playground equipment manufacturer says it is in the lower range compared to other companies in the wood processing industry of the same size.

In order to “neutralize” unavoidable emissions and be climate-neutral, SIK-Holz supports internationally recognized climate protection projects. For the years 2020 and 2021, the company has acquired 1,136 climate protection certificates for a forest protection project in Peru of the VCS (“Verified Carbon Standard”) quality label. Although such certificates do not change the company's actual CO2 emissions, they do help to preserve forests elsewhere in the best case.

In the long term, SIK-Holz aims at reducing its CO2 emissions. A high “CO2 footprint” is caused by the energy needs for production processes – in the future, the company wants to make use of more climate-neutral energy sources. A further factor in the CO2 balance is the individual travel mostly by car of the company’s employees to their workplace. Since the Brandenburg-based regional company is not sufficiently connected to public transport, an alternative would be the use of e-bikes. (eap)