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We are mindful of resources.

Katjes production is carbon-neutral!

Operations at our three locations in Germany have been carbon-neutral since 2020, making us one of the first carbon-neutral companies in the industry. Many measures big and small have allowed us to achieve this goal.

Our switch to green energy, which we’ve been using since 2015, was the biggest factor in reducing our carbon footprint. We’re also always optimizing our energy consumption and have thus managed to reduce our consumption per metric ton of product manufactured year after year. And 2020 was no different: we reduced our consumption of electricity by 8% and gas by 7% per metric ton of product manufactured, which brings us one step closer to our climate goal of cutting our CO2 emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2012. The next climate assessment, which is now being calculated, will tell us exactly how far we’ve come.

And because you can’t entirely eliminate emissions from one day to the next, we offset our emissions with high-quality, certified climate protection projects around the world.

Our location-specific emissions for 2021, which we offset voluntarily, are 19,500 metric tons of CO2. Our compensation efforts support a stove project in Uganda, a biomass project in India, and a forest protection project in Peru. We’re also a member of the Development and Climate Alliance and pursue all new developments in an effort to promote our energy optimization. More information about our climate protection projects is available here.

The packaging of the future.

Let’s start with the good news. We use 100% recycled materials for our boxes. All our packaging can be recycled. We regularly review the situation to see how we can optimize it. But our packaging does have to meet very exacting standards in order to keep our products fresh, hygienic and full of flavor. Presently, we can’t see any alternative to plastic. Unfortunately. We’re not interested in greenwashing, so we scrutinize alternatives to plastic very carefully.

Unfortunately, bioplastics are anything but resource-friendly. They don’t decompose naturally, and they can’t always be recycled. Manufacturing paper packaging would require enormous amounts of energy and water. Even then, we’d still need to coat paper bags with plastic to keep our products fresh which, in our humble opinion, defeats the point. Instead, we’ve decided that we want to be real packaging pioneers. We want to develop a genuine alternative to plastic. And we’re working on it!

You have a great idea for how we could package our products better? Please submit it to info@katjes.de.

Being mindful of resources means using fewer of them.

We constantly review our production processes and modernize our machines to ensure we use as few raw materials as possible. For example, we’ve installed state-of-the-art cooling units, our own cogeneration plant and thermal insulation, and we’ve optimized our compressed air processes and other processes to cut down on our carbon emissions and make sure that, day by day, we use less electricity and water.

Handling resources mindfully means generating as little waste as possible. 80% of our raw materials are delivered in reusable containers. This means we have virtually no packaging waste in our factories. And we don’t waste any food. Because if any of our products don’t quite meet our exacting quality standards, we simply sell them as factory seconds.

‘All veggie’ benefits the environment, too.

Intensive livestock farming is accelerating climate change. The carbon footprint for one kilo of vegetables is twenty times lower than for one kilo of pork. And vegetables need considerably less water, too. We’ve noticed a real difference since transitioning our entire production to vegetarian. For example, when we produce our Grün-Ohr-Bärchen (green-eared bears), our harmful emissions (e.g. CO2 and methane) are around 20% lower than for gummy bears that contain gelatin. And we use 42% less water. So changing our production was a win win situation all around – for animals and for all of us.

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