Sustainability Pledge

Last updated: January 06, 2024

Preamble

Sustainability is the term that addresses the careful and responsible use of natural and artificial resources. This term is in particular focus of our time considering the constantly advancing climate change, in which man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are warming the earth’s atmosphere and having negative consequences for humanity.

Sustainability therefore aims to generally use resources economically and efficiently, but also to help reduce waste products, such as to avoid carbon dioxide. Everyone in society is required to pursue these goals and thus help reduce the negative consequences. Industry and business can also contribute in this sense. This sustainability concept is intended to provide management and employees of data cybernetics ssc GmbH with guidelines, rights and obligations when dealing with resources.

Travel and Commute

Business trips for internal and external trips must be justified, team events are checked for remote capability or hybrid remote-on-site.

If travel is necessary, the number of travelers will be limited to what is necessary. In addition, reasonable rail connections are preferable to air and car travel. A reasonable local transport option is also preferable to a taxi ride, and an overnight stay is preferable to multiple trips.

The directive for domestic flights specifically states that they are only acceptable if the rail connection exceeds 8 hours. This exceeds what is reasonable because a domestic trip should be completed within working hours.

Office

data cybernetics ssc GmbH is primarily a remote-based company and consequently has a smaller space requirement. For company premises, we are committed to taking energy efficiency and insulation into account when renting and purchasing office or event space. The sensible use of ventilation, heating and air conditioning in the premises must be ensured.

This means that lights and multimedia devices are switched off in rooms that are not in use. Ultimately, every employee is required to use energy-saving settings on end devices (such as laptops and personal computers).

Computing power and IT resources

The guiding principle applies to computing power and IT resources (“compute”):

Compute is cheaper than in the past. But computing is not cheap or even free. Especially not in the cloud.

It should be noted that complex simulations, numerical calculations or training for machine learning are only carried out after a cost-benefit analysis. Unnecessary processes are shut down and unused instances are switched off. If possible, (multiple) copying of large amounts of data is avoided to reduce the computational load during serialization/deserialization and compression/decompression.

Partner Management

Environmental aspects must be considered when selecting and collaborating with suppliers and partners as well as when purchasing hardware, software and other services. The concern for sustainable action is communicated transparently to the partners.

Investors

When working with investors, their commitment to sustainability must be considered. The seriousness of this commitment should also be reflected in the investors’ existing portfolio.

Project selection

data cybernetics ssc GmbH has a certain amount of leeway when it comes to choosing projects with customers. This should be used in such a way that projects and products offered should serve sustainability.

If a customer has previously shown insufficient commitment to sustainability, our collaboration must serve to improve sustainability.