Best Case: Audi Preserving Biodiversity: Audi's Biodiversity Index
Mission:Zero, Audi's cross-site environmental program, focuses on biodiversity as one of the four key areas of action, alongside decarbonization, resource efficiency, and water usage.
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As a member of Biodiversity in Good Company, the Four Rings continued their commitment to protecting biodiversity in 2023 with projects at all Audi locations, ranging from wildflower meadows and wild bee conservation to reforestation initiatives.
To take a strategic approach to biodiversity conservation, Audi has developed a Biodiversity Index – analogous to its Decarbonization Index – which was further refined in 2023. Using specific key performance indicators, Audi evaluates each site and sets binding targets. This assessment includes questions such as: Are there green façades or rooftop vegetation? How are open spaces designed? Are employees being made aware of the issue, for example, through training programs? These factors help determine the extent to which Audi sites support biodiversity, allowing the company to develop strategies for a better environmental balance and measure their success.
“Every living being counts,” says Dr. Rüdiger Recknagel, Head of Environmental Protection at Audi. “Biodiversity efforts thrive on many small yet crucial initiatives and actions.”
Beacon project: travel-to-nature A peatland protection project that any company could implement
The tour operator travel-to-nature stands for the promotion of nature and species conservation through travel. A new project is being financed across all offers.
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The travel programs of travel-to-nature are carefully designed to ensure that wildlife is observed from a respectful distance and that nature is left as it was found. However, biodiversity is not only meant to be protected but actively promoted. That’s how travel-to-nature supports biodiversity through various projects at different travel destinations.
One standout initiative, however, is the peatland conservation project in Lithuania, which is funded across all offers independently of any specific travel destination. True to the slogan “We want MOOR!”, every trip booked includes a built-in donation of 25 euros. Customers are happy to contribute, and some even take the opportunity to visit the project in Lithuania and actively participate.
This project is a blueprint that can be applied across industries to almost any service or product – and in terms of its positive environmental impact relative to the company’s size, it is hard to surpass. Not only does it promote biodiversity across 300 hectares – equivalent to roughly 420 football fields – but it also plays a crucial role in carbon sequestration. Despite covering just three percent of the Earth's surface, peatlands store about twice as much CO₂ as all the world’s forests combined.
As a long-standing member of Biodiversity in Good Company, travel-to-nature is a pioneer in integrating biodiversity into business practices. For CEO and founder Rainer Stoll, one thing is clear: ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation should not stop at the company’s doorstep. His peatland conservation project truly deserves to be called a beacon initiative. Interest from other businesses is growing, and Stoll senses a shift in momentum, saying:
“It’s time to finally bring biodiversity and species conservation to the forefront alongside climate action,” says Rainer Stoll, CEO of travel-to-nature. “If more companies contributed to the protection and promotion of biodiversity, we would already be making significant progress.”
Example of a sustainable supply chain: einhorn The young, Berlin-based start-up produces sustainable period products and condoms from regenerative agriculture.
The challenges of protecting biodiversity in the supply chain and the corresponding measures to ensure the sustainable use of raw materials are described by Biodiversity in Good Company member einhorn as follows:
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“While we have yet to finalize the comprehensive assessment of einhorn’s biodiversity impact, we are operating under the assumption that agricultural land use represents a major driver for biodiversity loss in our supply chain. Rubber and cotton plantations are essential for the production of condoms and menstrual products but tend to be sites where both humans and nature get exploited systematically in the face of rising financial pressures. einhorn has therefore long considered the plantations to be the most crucial lever for our impact and focused attention on improving the conditions for both farmers and the environment.
At einhorn, we usually take one of two approaches to ensure sustainability when building a supply chain. Either we go to the root of the supply chain ourselves and take responsibility for socio-ecological issues or we do an in depth screening of potential partners to ensure their commitment the same standards that we like to hold ourselves to.
In the case of our condom supply chain, we chose the first option and researched all issues surrounding the cultivation of rubber in order to tackle them one by one. Since rubber mainly grows in biodiversity hotspots, the issue of conserving biodiversity was on the top of our list. In order to fulfill our own commitments to biodiversity, we established the Regenerative Rubber Initiative, a supply chain system intended to provide financial stability to rubber farmers who grow rubber trees in agroforestry systems, thus providing more habitats for other species than the much more widespread monocultural cultivation.
While cotton, which is the major component of our menstrual products, faces many of the same challenges, we are happy to work with a partner who had already done the research and connected all the dots to ensure a less intrusive cultivation of cotton by erasing any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides from their farms.”