Once again in 2019 Baloise Insurance cooperated with Europe’s largest charitable IT enterprise by donating IT equipment like notebooks, PCs, monitors and company mobile phones to AfB for data erasure, refurbishing and resale. Returning equipment to economic circulation like this can help avoid electronic waste and conserve natural resources on a sustainable basis.
Through their partnership, Baloise and AfB succeeded in saving equivalent to 56,288 kg of iron, 45,850 kg of CO2 and 134,710 kWh of energy. “The latter corresponds to the average annual electricity consumed by 56 two-person households,” explains Thomas Klein, Head of Marketing and Communications at Basler Versicherungen in Germany.
«We are delighted to have been able to make such a measurable contribution to environmental protection and inclusion. Our collaboration with AfB always runs very smoothly and we look forward to continuing this in 2020 too»
What is more, the equipment donation made by Baloise Insurance also helped to create a job for somebody with a disability. That is because work for people with disabilities (Arbeit für Menschen mit Behinderung – AfB) is an inclusion enterprise. The IT company currently employs more than 440 employees at 19 locations across Europe, roughly 45 per cent of whom have a disability. This partnership with Baloise helps bring the inclusion enterprise a step closer to its long-term vision of creating 500 jobs for people with disabilities.
«ere at Baloise we concentrate on the value we generate with our daily work. As such, for us, sustainability is directly linked to social, ecological and economic value creation. The sustainable use of pre-owned IT equipment is a very good example because this is something which generates added value for all groups involved»
The collaboration between AfB and Baloise Insurance shows that sustainability and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. Long-term cooperation and a focus on synergies helps Baloise and AfB to work together to generate mutual added value within a trusting partnership and this partnership helps to generate positive value for society and the environment. These positive effects reflect our sustainability approach which is based on our value-added model and factors in interdependencies between our resource groups.