2020 Sustainability Report

6 We regard this award, and our remarkable achievement in being one of the few industrial companies to have made their production climate-neutral ever since 2015, as an incen- tive to continue our sustainability endeavours with even greater resolution… This extract from the text of my speech at that time shows just how unsuspecting we still were at the end of 2019. Then, no-one had any idea that in the course of the following year, 2020, the overwhelming impact of the Covid-19 pandemic would change the whole world. All of a sudden, in spring 2020, everyone’s focus was solely and exclusively on the social and economic consequences of the pandemic. Greta Thunberg, the Fridays For Future cam- paign, climate activists and all the frequent demonstrations, events and media reports about climate change were swept away by the coronavirus pandemic. All the efforts that were being made in relation to the environment and sustainability and were previously so important suddenly became mean- ingless, all over the world. And the same thing happened at Girsberger. However, following the initial shock-induced paralysis, the world learned to live with the pandemic and it has become clear to everyone that life on our planet will probably never be free of pandemics again. People have also come to the realisation that, compared with the pandemic, climate change constitutes a far greater threat to humanity. The second, highly important difference is that the pandemic is an immediate danger to us now, whereas the destruction of the environment will mainly pose an existential threat to the generations which come after us. At Girsberger, we see ourselves as being under an ongoing obligation to ensure that the continuing threat to the environment and the need to do business sustainably are permanently rooted in our consciousness. That’s because our planet continues to face ecnomic, social and environmental challenges which can only be overcome with im- mense effort. In an attempt to address the acute global deficiencies more effectively, in 2015 the United Nations set out a political blueprint for the period up to 2030 in the form of its Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs for short. Agenda 2030 represents a commit- ment that over 190 countries have signed up to, including Switzerland and Germany. The 17 goals set out guidelines for a more sustainable world. The aim is to establish a basis for making global economic progress while ensuring social justice and not overstepping the Earth’s environmental limits. The 17 SDGs cover a wide range of aspects of sustain- ability such as poverty, health, climate change and environmental damage which are particularly relevant to businesses, enabling them to align their strategies with the global objectives. The private sector has a crucially important role to play in making sure that the sustain- ability goals of Agenda 2030 are met. That’s because, in a free market economy, the main responsibility for all matters of sustainability falls to companies – businesses. Every single company is called upon to make a real and effective contribution within its core business – as part of the progress on sustainability that absolutely must be made. In the light of that, our sustainability strategy that I outlined in our last report remains as pressing as ever: protecting the environment as effectively as possible should be a “ At Girsberger, we see ourselves as being under an ongoing obligation to ensure that the continuing threat to the environ- ment and the need to do business sustainably are perma- nently rooted in our conscious- ness. ”