Merus is going climate-neutral

I am Roland Dworschak, the owner of Merus. This is the first time I am writing for our blog myself. The reason: this project is very important to me and it will keep us busy for the next years.

The Merus Ring has been a sustainable and very environmentally friendly product from the beginning, since 1996. It has a long-term effect, often replaces chemical solutions and causes energy savings. At the beginning of the marketing we tried to sell the rings with "environmental arguments". 20 years ago we found that very few customers were interested in these arguments. So we changed our marketing and from then on we only sold our rings on the benefits and the savings that could be achieved.

Times have changed, many people today feel that the climate is changing.  And customers are open to discussing environmental aspects. We don't want to discuss at this point whether these changes are man-made or not, that is not constructive.  But we have come to the conclusion: We should do something. Therefore, at the end of 2019 we started to work out measures on how Merus can operate in a climate-neutral way.

What we are already doing

For some time now, we have been using the train instead of the plane. When train travel is not possible, we compensate for our journeys.  We have changed our packing material, try not to use plastic anymore. We use less and less paper and send brochures and invoices online.

Our project for this year - climate neutrality

In the first phase of the project we want to calculate how much CO₂ we as a company actually generate. This includes the questions:

• What amount of CO₂ is emitted to produce one kilogram of aluminium and how much energy is needed to turn a large piece of aluminium into a Merus Ring?
• How much electricity is needed for sawing or CNC processing?
• How much energy is needed to engrave the serial number and our logo into the ring?
• What distances does the Merus Ring have to cover from the supplier to us, and of course what distances do our rings cover on their way to our customers?

So we do not hand over our responsibility with the package to the carrier or parcel service, but we also consider the distance to our customers or dealers and the mode of transport.
Because a ring that we send to China by plane naturally has a different impact on the CO₂ balance than a ring that we send to Berlin in a truck.

Milestones

The first goal is to determine the amount of CO₂ that is emitted directly in connection with our business. Once this figure is known, we begin to avoid or compensate for it. However, we will write about this separately. Even when the project is in progress, we want to be completely transparent about how we calculate CO₂ consumption and what we do to compensate for this amount of CO₂. This means that where there is no climate-neutral solution, CO₂ is bound elsewhere in a project, for example through reforestation or similar.

We have already implemented some measures. From 2020, Merus will exclusively obtain electricity from renewable energies, from domestic hydroelectric power plants.  The engraving of the rings will also be done with electricity from renewable energy. Further measures are planned.

In the long term we also want to see how much CO₂ can be saved by using the rings. In other words, we want to calculate the positive contribution to the customer's CO₂ balance. So far, this has been extremely difficult, partly because each installation is of course unique. But in the end, what counts is not a figure on a piece of paper, but the actual contribution that each individual can make to climate protection.

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