Computop takes responsibility

Cycling along the beautiful Regnitz river in Bamberg or through the Speicherstadt warehouse district in Hamburg. You can get to work relaxed, bypassing the morning traffic jams, and go out into nature with your family at the weekend. This is not only healthy, but also helps the climate. Since 2021, payment people have been able to choose a work bike which they can lease from Computop. The idea for this came from the employee group "Green Payment People", which is committed to more climate and environmental protection in the company.

How can we manage without packaging waste in the office and in everyday life? How can we live sustainably? How can we save energy? We explored these questions in the four-part staff workshop "Zero Waste Your Life". With the help of practical tips and tricks and a great deal of motivation, we have already been able to initiate one or two projects: At the desks, waste will be separated even better, and we will dispense with plastic bags and lunch for the payment people will be delivered in reusable containers in the future.

Turquoise water, colourful fish and white beaches - that's what comes to mind when we think of the Caribbean. We’d rather that old plastic bags floating in the sea were not part of it. Yet this is the reality in countries like Haiti. The Plastic Bank Haiti project removes rubbish from the seas by paying locals for the plastic they collect. With the money they earn, they can send their children to school.

Anyone who has ever sat too close to a campfire knows how acrid the smoke can be. People in rural Peru often cook on open fires in their huts. Due to the smoke and low energy efficiency, this is both harmful to the environment and to their health. To help them, we support the local project Qori Q' oncha. By providing people with clean cooking stoves, it protects their health, saves wood and thus reduces CO2 emissions.

During the Time for Climate Action Week, from 19 - 25 April, the declared goal of all participating companies was to motivate their employees, customers and partners to get out of their climate comfort zone and take action. At Computop, for example, the Green Payment People were founded. Now more than 30 members, they can exchange ideas in the community about what else Computop can do for environmental and climate protection.

So that we know where we emit how much CO₂, we draw up a carbon footprint every year together with the experts from Climate Partner - everything is recorded, from the journey of the payment people to the energy requirements of the offices. Still quite large in 2019, we reduced our carbon footprint by more than half the following year. Unfortunately, it is not yet the size of Cinderella's shoes. Therefore, we compensate for what we cannot yet reduce through our climate protection projects.

Climate change can only be stopped if we work together – the Leaders for Climate Action have understood this. Hundreds of leaders, especially from the digital economy, have joined forces and have been working together to protect the environment and climate since 2019. They also motivate other companies to be part of the change. Since Payment People also pursue these goals, we joined Leaders for Climate Action.