Less is more This old saying applies in particular to the responsible use of resources, such as paper and packaging, which is why Gira is aiming to bring about consistent improvements in this area. Over the past year, we have once again been working on reducing our consumption of materials and also recycling and reusing them wherever possible.

Support for climate protection projects Working with the climate protection agency natureOffice gives us the opportunity to fully offset the CO₂ emissions generated by many of our projects, for example when printing our catalogues and brochures. This amounts to more than 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, despite the fact that we have been able to considerably reduce the size of the print runs for our advertising materials.

In order to offset these emissions, in 2016 Gira actively supported several climate protection projects with the help of natureOffice. These included the reforestation project around the town of Werdohl in the Sauerland region of Germany, which we have already sponsored in previous years. In 2007, this nature conservation area was hit by cyclone Kyrill which left a trail of devastation behind it.

Reducing material consumption In addition, we have been working with the specialists from interseroh for more than 15 years to evaluate our transport and sales packaging and to highlight its environmental impacts. In this area we now rely entirely on recycled materials and have completely stopped our use of paints and harmful printing inks. We are also reducing the volume and material consumption of our packaging, because here less is most definitely more.

You can find out what Gira is doing to manage its paper consumption in the long term here.