Sustainability starts with a CO2 footprint

Paul Feenstra of ATKB about the CO2 footprint tool Carbon Manager

Paul Feenstra is KAM coordinator at ATKB, a consultancy in nature and living environment with approximately 125 employees spread over five locations. Paul is concerned with quality, working conditions, environment, safety and corporate social responsibility. We asked him about his view on sustainability within ATKB and how the Carbon Manager helps him with this.

Showing the importance of sustainability

ATKB provides advice in the field of nature and living environment. In doing so, the agency wants to make an environmentally and socially responsible contribution to the use of our world.
“Our team consists largely of employees who consider sustainability very important. They would like to show that ATKB as an organization also takes care of the environment.”

“So we think corporate social responsibility (CSR) is important at ATKB. We would like to demonstrate this and we must also be able to demonstrate this, for example in tenders. To demonstrate that we do business sustainably, we use the well-known certificate of the CO2 performance ladder.”

Two years ago, Paul joined ATKB, when he set up a CSR framework containing KPIs that contribute to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Then the Carbon Manager came into the picture: “I already knew the tool from my previous position at a drinking water company. There we used the Carbon Manager more as a platform to give a place to all (legal) environmental issues, such as the progress of the EED and our own emissions. Now we also use the Carbon Manager at ATKB.”

The Carbon Manager as a tool for the CO2 footprint

“The Carbon Manager is a great tool for working specifically on our CSR framework and KPIs.
At ATKB, we can mainly save energy by looking critically at the consumption in our buildings and our fleet. One of our goals is to comply with the BREAAM – in use, the sustainability quality mark that is used in the Netherlands for buildings. An additional advantage is that this quality mark can, for example, contribute to a discount on insurance.

In the coming period we will make one of our five locations more sustainable every year. Sustainability starts with a CO2 footprint, because you need to know how much CO2 you actually emit and where in the organization in order to be able to reduce and compensate. A tool was needed to easily keep track of all that data.”

Monitor data quality by moving away from Excel

Before ATKB used the Carbon Manager as a CO2 footprint tool, the organization kept all sustainability figures in Excel. “Now we are slowly moving away from Excel and transferring all data to the Carbon Manager. The validation of the data in Excel was a problem. And not everyone is equally handy with Excel. We can no longer afford to make a mistake that means your data is incorrect. With the CO2 performance ladder certificate, you as an organization are judged on two decimal places. A tool like the Carbon Manager prevents that. All information and documents can be found in one place, so we can monitor the quality of our data.”

Recommended for the CO2 performance ladder

“I definitely recommend the Carbon Manager. It is a modern tool that helps organizations to become more sustainable, for example through certification processes such as the CO2 performance ladder. The Carbon Manager is also very useful for organizations that have to demonstrate that they meet the energy saving obligation and other legislation, for example for the EED (European Energy Efficiency Directive).
There is so much that comes at you and it is nice to be able to fall back on a tool such as the Carbon Manager and the expert team behind it. We can always contact the team of the Carbon Manager with questions. That’s great, because they know exactly how the market works.”

Knowing more?

Curious about what the Carbon Manager CO2 footprint tool can do for your organization? Request a free demo and try the Carbon Manager for 3 months without obligation.