In addition to the national targets for reducing greenhouse gases, voluntary climate protection in particular plays a key role for us as an eighth-generation family business. As our managing partner Frauke Helf explains: "Yes, we consume energy and resources - like all manufacturing companies and companies active in the economy - and emit CO₂ in the process. But together with our employees we take responsibility for our emissions and thus make a concrete and measurable contribution to climate protection".

In three steps to CO₂ neutrality
For RHODIUS, climate protection consists of three stages: Avoid CO₂, reduce CO₂ and in the last instance compensate the unavoidable CO₂. For this purpose, the CO₂ footprint was first determined according to international standards. This was done in cooperation with ClimatePartner, one of the pioneers in the field of climate protection for companies.

CO₂ avoid: 100 % green electricity since 2020
We have already examined many measures with which CO₂ can be completely avoided. At the same time, this is very demanding, especially in an industrial company where energy in the form of electricity for production, for example, is unavoidable. A big and important step was therefore the complete conversion to green electricity from 100% hydropower.

CO₂ reduce
We are constantly investing in energy-efficient and sustainable production technologies - 2 million euros have been earmarked for this in the next two years. Thus, the relative CO₂ emissions have already been reduced by 8.1% in recent years. Irrespective of this, the installation of the new glass plant at the end of 2019 even enabled us to achieve energy savings of 40% compared to the previous plant.

CO₂ compensate
We compensate for the remaining and currently unavoidable CO₂ through ClimatePartner's climate protection project "Clean drinking water for Uganda", which is certified with the highest gold standard.

How does that work?
Greenhouse gases like CO₂ are distributed evenly in the earth's atmosphere, so that the concentration of greenhouse gases is about the same everywhere on earth. It is therefore irrelevant to the greenhouse effect where on earth emissions are caused or avoided. Climate protection projects demonstrably save CO₂ and make an important contribution to combating global warming.

By participating in the project, CO₂ can be saved by co-financing technologies that make it possible to produce clean drinking water in Uganda without boiling and thus without the need for logging and burning for water disinfection. This also improves the health situation for the local people - because the water quality is much better and smoke development is avoided.