August - SDG no. 13 “Climate action”

More and more large financial institutions all over the world now see climate change as a major threat to financial stability. Climate change can affect the economy in a way we have never seen before. Try and think about the latest natural disaster you remember, then the one before and that one before that. Unfortunately, natural disasters as a result of climate change appear very frequently; hurricanes, floods, wildfire, droughts. As a result, they all affect the economy in one way or another.

During covid-19 we have seen that our man-made greenhouse effect, perhaps even benefits from humans being in lockdown and goods not being produced and transported. This shows there is hope and that we can still mitigate our negative impact on climate change.

As a service provider, we at Mazars cannot ignore the climate impact that we exert and we are fully aware of our role to play in tackling climate change.

For each of the five pillars of our global sustainability strategy - part of this also introduced in January Stories 2021. For Good - we are determined to walk the talk, turn our commitments into actions, and deliver on our promises.

To do this, we have set ourselves clear objectives and have committed to limiting our travel, promoting the use of greener vehicles and public transportation, more accurately measuring our global carbon footprint emissions, reducing our waste, encouraging working remote, and compensating for our plane trips by supporting reforestation initiatives.

Our initiatives at Mazars include specifically, among others:

• Locally in Denmark, we are starting to measure KPIs to track our emissions, set goals and evaluate.
• In the Netherlands, the use of electric cars is actively promoted through a 10% increase in the lease budget, the opportunity to install a charging station at your house at Mazars’ expense and charging stations made available in corporate parking lots.
• In South Africa, Mazars has been steadily measuring its carbon footprint emissions and has taken tangible steps to manage and reduce them through planting trees and migrating towards a zero-paper environment.
• In Sweden, the local Mazars team has tackled the issue of electronic waste. By partnering with Inrego, a reseller that fosters circular economy by trading used IT equipment, Mazars in Sweden reduced its carbon footprint emissions by almost five tonnes in 2018/2019 through recycling its IT equipment.
• In the UK, Green Champions have been appointed in all offices, and a national waste audit is being carried out, with the final objective of having zero waste going to landfill.

At Mazars in Denmark we consider Sustainability in everything we do; when we buy new office equipment, recycle electronical devices, minimize food waste, recycle branded materials, and optimize the way trash is sorted and recycled.

We all need to act now - it is in the interest of everyone, not least next generation! We can all make a difference.