"We try to anchor the topic of sustainability throughout idealo."

Meet Diana, Laura, and Jeruscha from the idealo Sustainability Team.

How is the sustainability team structured??

We are currently three permanent employees and have two working students to support us most of the time.

What topics does the Sustainability team work on??

We try to anchor the topic of sustainability throughout idealo. In doing so, we have our own projects that we implement. This includes, for example, calculating the CO2 footprint and buying CO2 emission certificates to make idealo climate neutral. We also operate as an internal consultancy and provide advice to colleagues from all departments and thus we implement projects together with other departments. For example, when someone from Product & Tech develops something, we evaluate whether it can have a good impact and see how we can implement it together. The third pillar of our work is looking for innovations, observing the market, and developing sustainability strategies for the future.?

What measures and projects did you work on last year??

We aim to implement projects in the field of environmental sustainability on the one hand and social projects on the other. We are now addressing the issue of human rights, as we see new legislation coming up in Europe as well as the relevance of human rights growing for us and our business. In an interdisciplinary task force together with Axel Springer and other companies of the Axel Springer Group, we are looking at how we can implement human rights due diligence properly. In addition, we are looking at what other human rights violations can occur, how we can prevent violations from happening and how we can make it particularly easy for those affected to report them. We also work a lot with other departments such as content or business development to make our platform more sustainable. The direct purchase is a good example of this: Since May 2022 all deliveries from idealo direct purchase are shipped in a climate neutral way.?We also have our own sustainability filter in over 220 categories, which only shows you more sustainable products when you shop on the platform. Our goal is to expand this filter even more and therefore enable sustainable consumption. A big project during the last few months was our first sustainability report, in which we make the sustainability performance and activities of idealo transparent to the public.?

Why is sustainability a relevant topic for a company???

You can look at it from an opportunity or risk perspective, and both are equally important: On the one hand, the issue is close to many people's hearts. When we talk to other employees, many tell us that they applied to idealo because we are such a sustainable company and do things differently than other companies. In this respect, sustainability is also essential in helping to shape our culture. It is a value that unites us all at idealo. On the other hand, we see that there is now a lot of legislation, and, especially in Europe, companies are increasingly required to act more sustainably. We welcome this very much because you can't always hope for goodwill on the part of companies. But there is also the opportunity view, which?we find more appealing. We see that new generations such as Generation Z are very interested in the topic of sustainability. For us as an e-commerce company, this means that there is a huge market of people who want to compare prices but also say that sustainability must not be left behind. Therefore, it is up to us to communicate that they can find more sustainable products with us. From this perspective, more and more people see that sustainability is a must-have and that companies lose relevance if they do not stand up for the issue. ?

You have recently worked on a sustainability report. What is included in a sustainability report and why is it relevant to a company??

A sustainability report makes transparent which projects we have worked on and what we have achieved in recent years. When preparing the report, a materiality analysis is carried out to see which topics are most relevant for our business. For each of these relevant topics, we include our management approach and our concrete actions as well as KPIs, where applicable. The report sets out what drives us forward as a company in terms of sustainability and what is important to our stakeholders, such as our employees and users. The report also sets out what we are already doing well and where there are areas where we can do more. The advantage of a sustainability report is that it makes us comparable with other companies. We report according to an internationally valid standard and other companies do the same when preparing their sustainability reports. The reports can then be compared with each other. This allows employees and users to form their own opinions about a company.???

What do you have planned for the next few months??

It is important to us that the topic of sustainability is also anchored in our business strategy so that we have the opportunity to measure the impact and evaluate whether we are developing our business model as sustainably as we would like. We are working on this and notice that our top management supports the idea and clearly says we need this in our strategy. Therefore, we are working with our top management to include sustainability in strategic decision-making. And then, of course, after the sustainability report is before the report. We have now published our first report, learned a lot, and are doing a retrospective to analyze what we can do better next year. For example, we are looking into climate protection projects for the survival insurance in 2022 and we are developing a new way for social engagement.

What are the challenges for your work and your team??

For one thing, we always must pay attention to how we communicate. Because we don't want to engage in greenwashing. We also must be open to new information, for example, from science, to continuously evaluate our ideas and approaches. One example is the Kieztag, which we organized regularly until March 2020. Due to New Work and the move to a new neighborhood, we now have to rethink this project and consider how we can rethink social engagement. We are currently setting up a concept where we work with the same institutions regularly and support them where they have the biggest needs. Our goal is that we end up doing more good than causing work organizing the engagement. In addition, we would like to use the knowledge as an eCommerce company to help people. For example, we would like to help people who have newly arrived in Germany because they have fled their home country, how to write a good application. We want to pass on things that are natural to us but not to others. In this way, we can make a big difference.?

Thank you, Diana, Laura, and Jeruscha!

Ready to start your own journey at idealo? Check out our open positions?here.