WIR DENKEN UM Report

1 survey. 45 questions. 1,292 participants. 20,000 responses.

After two weeks, we received a total of 1,292 completed surveys across the four groups of customers, suppliers, employees and management. Plus over 500 incomplete or abandoned responses. Thank you for your support! As promised, we will plant or donate trees accordingly. We are currently planning a reforestation campaign for you, which will probably take place in September. As soon as the day of action and the schedule are fixed, we will invite you to reforest together.

 

Outcomes in a Nutshell

Sustainability is a broad topic – economic and personal – with a high value and high demands. Our commitment has medium to high credibility. We are very pleased about this, because we are people of conviction and do not follow trends. We put a lot of heart and soul, professional knowledge and time into it in the form of knowledge transfer internally and with our suppliers. However, it is quite clear from the evaluations that we are not transparent enough, we need to communicate better – and we need to assume our responsibility as a retailer much more strongly. By making our assortment more sustainable, using our voice more, joining industry-wide initiatives and influencing supply chains through our suppliers, advocating for climate and nature protection, and, and, and…. And it is this set of attack points that is the challenge!

 

 

Everyone has the choice – The receipt as a ballot paper

We already take our criteria into account when purchasing our product range and focus on high-quality products that are functional, durable and useful for the sport in question. At the same time, we want to sensitize our customers to responsible consumption. With our WIR DENKEN UM label, we present more sustainable alternatives. But we leave the choice! Several parties are directly involved in responsible consumption: the companies with their products, we as retailers with our assortment – and customers with their purchasing decisions. Because purchasing decisions are political and your receipt is like a ballot paper. Consumers have a strategic power: With the decision for a fair and environmentally friendly manufactured product – as well as over the use and care. Nevertheless, shopping alone won’t make the world a better place. A central problem remains: We consume too much, and less would be best for ourselves and our planet.

 

WDU Facts – Don’t talk, act

For the base year 2019, our footprint is 970 tons of CO2e, which we have also offset.  However, it is important to us to avoid and reduce our emissions and only offset the unavoidable emissions. That’s why we have already implemented a lot, five examples:

 

  • Our electricity consumption accounts for 11% in our footprint. That’s why we switched completely to green electricity in 2021, saving 106.24 tons of CO2e per year.
  • Our paper consumption accounts for 30% of our footprint. This includes tissue paper, office paper, print jobs – and also our catalog. In 2020, we halved the print run of the winter and summer catalogs and the size of each. This will save us 150 tons of paper per year, which corresponds to around 133 tons of CO2e. In addition, the catalog is now printed in a climate-neutral way.
  • Our employee mobility accounts for 14% in our footprint. To motivate our employees to commute in a more climate-friendly way, we introduced our mobility lottery. In 2021, our active employees covered 12,000 kilometers on foot, by bike or public transport – and three colleagues carpool 60 kilometers a day.
  • In our product range, we currently have around 3,500 sustainable products out of more than 30,000, which are characterized by the following criteria: renewable raw materials, recycled materials, fair dews, fair wool, PFC free, EU production, 100% vegan, organic cotton, Fair Wear, Blue Sign, Green Button, climate neutral.

Apparel: 3,130 WDU products

Shoes: 419 WDU products

Equipment: 92 WDU products

  • We also donated, got involved or lent a hand ourselves: 10,000 euros to Himalaya’s Children Foundation, 13,000 euros to Bergwaldprojekt e.V., merchandise for charitable purposes, involvement in local projects and initiatives.

 

 

Our most important learnings so far:

Learning No. 1: Sustainability is never finished, but a constant improvement and a continuous questioning of the status quo. Time to act is now!

Learning No. 2: No company currently does everything right, not even us. But we are working on it and continue to do so every day!

Learning No. 3: It doesn’t take one person or one company to do everything right. It takes many. And if we motivate a critical mass, we can manage to preserve a livable world and fix the greatest man-made damage and pollution.