Sustainability report 2020 | Our efforts towards more sustainability in our company
The Sustainability Report is the annual sustainability logbook of the Peerigon Sustainability Passion Group. Every year, we collect and evaluate company-related data on the topic of sustainability. 2020 has presented us with challenges in many respects: We had to get used to a new normal, reset our priorities and rethink things we took for granted. In this report, we would like to show a few facets of our efforts toward more corporate social responsibility. Despite the pandemic, some good managed to come out of Peerigon this year. We start with our four personal success stories. Social media highlights, climate report and a brief overview of our most important facts and figures are also worth taking a look at. And last but not least, we want to show examples of the projects in which Peeris invested their time in 2020 when they were not working on customer projects.
#1: The Bee's Knees | Wildflower meadow sponsorships for Christmas
Over the last 27 years, flying insect biomass has plummeted by 75 percent in Germany. Given the accelerating decline in insect populations around the world, this news was quite alarming. During the winter season of 2020, we tried to make our own tiny contribution to help the environment. On behalf of our customers and business partners, we took over the sponsorship of 25.000 square meters of wildflower meadows near Augsburg. That is just a small gesture, of course. Still, it felt good to be able to witness happy buzzing and humming on our group bike tour around Augsburg the next summer.
#2: Signing the "Charta der Vielfalt" | Our commitment to diversity
Age, ethnic background and nationality, gender and gender identity, physical and mental abilities, religion and worldview, sexual orientation, and social background. Could you have listed all core dimensions of diversity? For us, it is clear that constant internal and external dialogue is essential to give diversity the space it deserves. In order to promote our commitment and help raise more awareness, we signed the Diversity Charter in 2020, whose guideline on the Dimensions of Diversity gave our working group the first steps in the right direction. Since then, we have been working continuously on our processes for a community that thrives to support all individuals and life models. Our differences are what makes a team great and pushes us forward.
#3: Staying Fresh | Relaunch as a team effort
As our client work was slowing down because of the pandemic, we finally took the time to do what all self-respecting developers do from time to time: we rebuilt our own website (hey there, you are looking at it right now!). We took the chance to try out current frameworks like Chakra UI and Gatsby. We chose Netlify for deployment and GraphCMS for data management (and became implementation partner 👋🏻). There have also been some changes in terms of content. For example, we completely revamped our service profile with workshops and integrated our blog. We then redefined our brand with an updated logo, fresh font selection, and expanded color palette. Quite the team effort, we would say. What do you think of the new digs?
#4: Introducing Team Trust Members | We are listening
We've all been there. Work can be intense, there are misunderstandings, something feels off. And although all our founders are very open and approachable team members may have their own reservations about why they would prefer talking to someone else. Wouldn't it be great to just be able to talk to someone else from the team in private? That's why we introduced the Trust People. First and foremost they are unbiased listeners. Everything talked about together is confidential. Our two Trust Peeris - as we call them - are elected in an anonymous team vote. Always two, for mutual support and to at least represent two genders. They can't magically solve problems. But they will take time to listen and help with next steps.
Always in for a break: coffee in the office
Do you want to load external content from twitter?
Our report in facts and figures
In this part, we document numbers and facts. Each plays a vital role in our efforts for more sustainability and social responsibility in our company. We look at parameters such as carbon emissions and energy consumption, resources and our future direction.
2,002
EUR donations
397
km Carsharing
52
Nodeschool participants
21,532
kg CO₂ emissions (have been offset)
5,937
Kilometers traveled by Train
12
Employees
277
hours of exercise
We are carbon neutral*
Since 2019 we balanced our entire CO₂ consumption - from energy and heating to office supplies and business travel. This resulted in a footprint of 23,532 kg CO₂ for 2020, which we have had verified by Climate Partner. Together with a safety margin of 10%, we offset our corporate carbon footprint via the Kasigau Wildlife Corridor forest protection project in Kenya. We are pleased to be one of the first climate-neutral IT service providers in Bavaria and hope to further reduce our emissions in the following years.
* As the term climate neutral has been under criticism, ClimatePartner has changed its label since 2023: Companies with a financial climate contribution is the appropriate term.
Virtual Company Run
Do you want to load external content from twitter?
Personnel and community engagement
What do our employees actually do when they're not working on customer projects? Making coffee? That is all well and good, but much more important to us are the hours we devote to sharing knowledge internally or introducing newbies to the world of the WWW. That's work, too. And on top of that, the weekly sports activities – whether it's swimming, horseback riding, running or welly throwing.
Staying in shape
How can developers keep fit despite screen work?
Health promotion
All this learning and developing (and mostly sitting at our desks) must have a good counter-balance. For that, we have our fitness budget. Each Peeri can devote a share of their working time to move and sweat: we did that on 246 days of the year! The race for which day we do the most exercise is close this year: while we probably don't really get going Mondays, most of us use our budget Tuesdays! Roughly 25 hours per Peeri 🏋️♂️ After this is settled it's time to crown our sport champions 2020! Matthias 🥇 made the best out of his sports budget, closely followed by Tanner 🥈 and Bene 🥉. Congratulations!
Exchange of experience
How can internal knowledge transfer succeed?
Training measures
Notice that peak at the end of the year? This is the result of an intense training session marathon, where we took the time to prepare and attend internal workshops. Over the year we developers absorb a lot of useful knowledge, while time is usually scarce to share it back to the whole team. But not this year! After all, we spent more than 1000 hours to educate ourselves further. Almost 300 hours together as a team and, additionally, a whole working week by each Peeri themselves. 🤯
Lectures
Sharing Knowledge
Working together with University of Applied Sciences Augsburg
Our ties with the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg have a long history. The foundation stone of Peerigon was laid in these halls and many of our colleagues have attended the institute for a year or two. In 2020, some of us returned once again as lecturers. 5 Peeris supervised student theses, gave lectures and workshops on Git and Web Systems, and organised 4 lectures: Startklar. Nodejs, JavaScript and Corporate Culture and Leadership.
Sustainability is a team effort.
Sustainability needs binding rules, clear structures, and a sense of responsibility for each individual. In our day-to-day work, we ensure that our activities fit in with our philosophy and core business. But we are aware that this is only the beginning. Small gestures are not enough. And acting responsibly cannot be done alone. Making our working world more sustainable is a task that affects our entire frame of reference. With your help, we can take the first steps to make a difference.
Get in touch.
Perhaps you missed one or two items of information when reading our second sustainability report. Or maybe you have any praise, ideas or suggestions on how we can improve the report in the future? We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Peerigon: the company for bespoke software development.
service
workshop
Do you already know Konsens, our free online tool?