We have a diverse range – and a unified strategy

Climate change, dwindling biodi­versity and the growing poverty gap represent huge challenges for humanity. Policy­makers, trade unions and civil society alone cannot overcome these global challenges – companies like Tchibo also carry respon­si­bility to foster sustainable devel­opment.

Sustain­ability has been an integral part of Tchibo’s business strategy since 2006, when the Corporate Social Respon­si­bility department was founded to control sustain­ability management in the depart­ments, reporting directly to the CEO. Since then, we have been contin­u­ously monitoring and optimising our regional activ­ities, products and processes with regard to and based on ecological and social consid­er­a­tions. It is our vision that the Tchibo brand stands for sustain­ability, and our stake­holders agree.

Tchibo faces multi­faceted and ambitious tasks. Tchibo has set key prior­ities and – whenever reasonable – yearly goals to live up to its respon­si­bility. We concen­trate on the areas of our business activ­ities in which our actions have the greatest effect on people and the environment – both in terms of the issues themselves and of the regions we are active in. Our stake­holders are the focus of every­thing we do.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. At Tchibo this means each employee contributes to our sustainable opera­tions in his or her area of influence. Our management system ensures that a wide variety of activ­ities results in a unified whole.

Any company has to contin­u­ously assess its progress if it wants to ensure that sustain­ability becomes a corner­stone upon which all its activ­ities are built. For this reason, Tchibo sets itself new goals every year, goals which we define as clearly as we possibly can. There were quite a few things we wanted to achieve in 2010 – and we managed to do many of them.

Tchibo achieved a lot for sustain­ability in 2010, but these successes are no reason for us to sit back with satis­faction – instead, they inspire us to work on achieving even better results in the future. As a result, we have compiled another list of ambitious aims for ourselves in 2011.

From intro­ducing a binding Code of Conduct for our suppliers to enhancing our range of products to include “green” energy goods, we have signif­i­cantly advanced our ecolog­i­cally sound business model over the past few years. We have summarised our major milestones and devel­op­ments for you.