2020 has been a tough year for all of us. A strange year but at the same time a year that has demanded from all of us a greater degree of responsibility and commitment than any other since the beginning of this millennium.
In Ekohunters has not been different and we have had to put all our talent and effort to overcome this turbulent time we have had to live. In any case, always with the commitment to sustainability as an unwavering hallmark. As in previous years, despite the difficulties, we did not want to give up on continuing to inspire the necessary changes to make possible a development model based on strategies that place the environment, the planet and the people who inhabit it at the base of the system and the basis for decision making and policy adoption.
This economic and social situation derived from the pandemic we are living makes it more urgent than ever to inspire the necessary changes that we at Ekohunters advocate for. We cannot, and the current situation warns us, continue to bet on the same model of resource exploitation, consumption and exponential growth. We have to bet on models backed by coherence and rationality. We must use the transformation tools available to us to put people and the planet at the center of our development model.
Undoubtedly, with this objective on the horizon, it was an obligation as a company to try to align our activity with the 2030 agenda of the united nations, trying to implement, to the extent of our possibilities, all or most of its objectives in order to inspire the necessary change that will return us to the path of economic, social and environmental sustainability.
These changes, as far as Ekohunters and our activity are concerned, involve continuing to adopt our business vision based on the values and principles represented by eco-design and circular economy strategies.
Ekohunters Internal Responsibility. Commitment to sustainability.
The Covid 19 pandemic forced us, like so many other companies, to make an extra effort to try to survive and overcome this difficult time for all of us. The adoption of teleworking has not meant a big change since we were already doing it to a large extent before this situation. However, for sustainability purposes it has meant a huge reduction of the impacts associated with the existence of the office (electricity, water, heating, transportation…). Despite all this, this has not been an obstacle for us to try to continue to assume our responsibility with our personal footprints each of us in the activity developed from our homes. In this sense, we have been able to estimate hours and personal consumption to compensate for these impacts as we did when we had an office. Whatever the circumstances, we have to maintain this important commitment to achieve the sustainability we do not want to give up.
• Offsetting our Internal Carbon Footprint.
As we have been doing since we started our business, in 2020 we remained committed to reducing our carbon footprint and offsetting our impacts through our long-standing collaboration with the Zero CO2 organization.
This collaboration is supported by the enormous and magnificent work that this organization develops in various parts of the world trying to safeguard the planet and its resources. On this occasion and as we have been doing in previous years, we have collaborated in the project “Conservation of the Madre de Dios rainforest” in Peru. Project in which we have been involved for several years and that tries to safeguard the Peruvian Amazon, in serious risk due to deforestation, and specifically the reserve of “Madre de Dios”.
The construction of the transoceanic highway, the farmers, ranchers and illegal loggers that invade it, endanger the future of this great biodiversity reserve. This project (REDD Madre de Dios Conservation Project in the Amazon), through which we have compensated more than half a ton of CO2 equivalent, will drastically reduce deforestation, increase forest surveillance and promote the generation of benefits in the forest for local communities.
Offsetting the Carbon Footprint of our international logistics activity.
As a consequence of our commercial activity with our customers, Ekohunters assumes as its own the footprint emitted by the contracted logistics operators. These impacts are derived from the more than 40,000 kilometers traveled during the year 2020. These kilometers traveled have resulted in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately six and a half tons of CO2 equivalent.
To compensate for these impacts on the environment, and under the premise of “think globally act locally“, we have sought to protect our immediate surroundings by carrying out an ecosystem restoration project here in our territory, the Basque Country.
As in the past, for this objective we have collaborated with the initiative “One Tree planted“, which through the local association “Lurgaia” is carrying out the reforestation of the forests of Undabaso, an area located in the Biosphere Reserve of Urdaibai, through the “Quercus” program for the recovery of lost forests.
“The project is aimed at improving the ecological status of water bodies, eliminating invasive species and the maintenance and fixation of CO2 in the long term. More than 35 species will be planted, such as Quercus robur, Betula alba, Corylus avellana, Fraxinus excelsior, Acer campestre, Ilex aquifolium, Salix sp., Taxus baccata, Castanea sativa, Alnus glutinosa, Cornus sanguinea, Fagus sylvaticus, etc.“
All this commitment and responsibility deployed by Ekohunters, as a consequence of the development of its business activity and the environmental impacts derived from it, is framed, as we have mentioned previously, in its policy of adopting the principles and values derived from the 2030 agenda of the united nations and the sustainable development goals that are and should be the foundation and the roadmap that should mark any economic and social model.
The crisis of the socio-economic and environmental model in which we are increasingly immersed makes it necessary to inspire these changes that lead to a new system that is more just, supportive, sustainable and resilient to the changes that are coming. At Ekohunters we work every day with this goal in mind.
