News item | 17-01-2024 | 15:28
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is taking more and more steps to make its business operations more sustainable. This became apparent on Thursday, January 11, when the so-called CO2-Performance ladder certificate was awarded during the New Year’s drinks of the sustainability program Mission Sustainable. The certificate is mainly an encouragement to continue working on making the ministry and embassies more sustainable next year, says Hans de Jong of the Operations Directorate.
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This certificate confirms that BZ has been certified at Step 3 of the so-called CO since November 20232 Performance adder. This means that BZ is now as far along as the other ministries. Only Defense does not participate in the CO2-Performance ladder.
The fact that BZ was the last ministry to achieve this is due to the complexity, says Hans de Jong. ‘Take the energy consumption of our real estate. We have 463 properties in 160 countries. It was a huge job to collect this data.’ The certificate is primarily an encouragement to take more steps in the field of sustainability in the coming year. De Jong: ‘There are seven people working on this task at BZ, but of course we especially want the embassies to get to work themselves.’
More sustainable BZ
BZ Mission Sustainable’s sustainability program started two years ago with the aim of making BZ more sustainable. The goals of the program include a climate-neutral BZ by 20230 and a learning approach to the circular economy. The spearheads for next year are different travel behavior and making real estate more sustainable at, among others, embassies worldwide.