Sustainability festival of the Berlin IHK: Biogas from the bin and clean shoe care – Berlin
The word sustainability has long been discredited – but an appropriate substitute was not found at the sustainability festival of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK). After all, 1,400 entrepreneurs and self-employed people accepted the invitation and caused a lot of hustle and bustle and a good atmosphere in the foyer of the chamber headquarters on Fasanenstrasse on Thursday.
“Fascinating”, said the Honorary President of the IHK, Alba boss Eric Schweitzer, the response. Schweitzer took the opportunity to take a stand for waste separation, especially organic waste collection.
If all organic waste really only ended up in the bin provided (“30 to 40 percent waste”), so much biogas could be produced that 50 percent of natural gas imports from Russia could be occupied. It’s all a question of sustainable behavior in everyday life.
The most prominent speaker was Environment Senator Bettina Jarasch (Greens). With verve, almost defiantly, she called for sustainability to no longer be discussed on an abstract level, but to be transferred to reality.
To this end, politicians want to create a uniform framework and resolve specific conflicts of interest between nature conservation and energy generation – keyword new wind turbines – and between climate protection and tenant protection – keyword energetic renovation. They are “wildly determined” to use the “kick” of the Ukraine war – as terrible as it is – for the expansion of renewable energies.
Your plea for the mobility turnaround – specifically against the expansion of the city motorway and for less car traffic in the city center – was received with much applause.
Sustainability seems to be primarily female, said Jarasch at the beginning of her speech. Up until her appearance, mostly women had played the podium, above all the Sustainability Council of the IHK, which is actually called “Network for Corporate Responsibility”.
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Four entrepreneurs want to advance the topic, both within and above all outside the IHK: Antje Meyer from the communications agency orangeblue has taken over the chair. Whereby sustainable social and economic considerations should also be considered, because without employees and stable sales, avoiding carbon dioxide does not help either.
Berlin is “top” in chemical research
The podium on the role of Berlin companies in the transformation of the economy brought together a wide variety of actors. Sandra Jost founded DexLeChem in 2013, which operates “green chemistry” and also works out environmentally friendly processes for the production of chemicals.
Jost said Berlin was at the top when it came to chemical research, even if there was little chemical industry at home here. The chemical industry is elementary for many products, but still works mainly with fossil raw materials and fossil energy, although there are better methods.
In Germany, for example, ammonia is still being produced using a process that is almost a hundred years old and consumes far too much energy. However, the discussion about the “transformation” of the industry is less about a new process, said Jost, and more about replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. “It’s crazy.” Sustainability is a “mega-topic” and means drawing from a large innovation pool – “they have to go to the core of their value creation”.
Could have a double sustainable effect: company housing
Martha Marisa Wanat, head of Bicicli Holding GmbH, advises companies on how to make their mobility more low-emission. They prophesied a “return to company housing” as it was built 100 years ago, for example by companies like Siemens. Even then, it was already a question of locating the employees close to the plant in order to save them long journeys. Today this is called traffic avoidance. Company apartments could also play a major role in the increasingly tough competition for skilled workers.
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In smaller formats could many companies present their sustainability projectsincluding the global company Amazon, which alongside Google is one of the really big providers of cloud services.
Jonas Bürkel from Amazon Web Services (AWS) explained that moving data and programs to the cloud already means significant energy savings because the data centers of the large Internet companies work much more efficiently than the servers in their own company. AWS also offers many programs and best-practice models that companies can use to calculate and optimize their resource consumption.
Cartier checks Berlin manufacturers for sustainability
Traditional companies such as Berliner Salzenbrodt GmbH, founded in 1909, have long been concerned with sustainability with their shoe care brand Collonil, as sales manager Carsten Gövert emphasised. From the packaging to the ingredients, the care products have been changed, which is also what the customers demand. For example, the Parisian fashion company Cartier sent two inspectors to the company before orders were placed.
Flughafen Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH is now also working with the company to achieve ecologically responsible impregnation of its stone floors. In this case, the topic of sustainability even follows to a new business area.