Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility stands for socially and environmentally responsible company management. With this in mind, TAKKT bases its corporate actions on the Global Compact, formulated by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 1999. Companies supporting the Global Compact Initiative commit themselves to following several principles, including:

• Protecting human rights
• Abolishing forced labour
• Eradicating child labour
• Preventing corruption
• Fostering environmental awareness

Support for children in need
Since 2006, TAKKT Group has expanded its activities that promote training and further education for children and young people or that create jobs. The company has so far concentrated on the Indian city of Mumbai, formerly Bombay. Mumbai is a metropolis with a population of over 14 million and is also twinned with Stuttgart, where TAKKT AG has its headquarters.

In Mumbai, TAKKT has supported the child aid project Prem Dan since 2006. The organisation’s name means “gift of love”, and it was founded in 1978 by the Indian Sister Felicity Morris. Ever since its foundation, the organisation has offered inter-denominational humanitarian aid in the slums of Mumbai. TAKKT has sponsored 30 children, in each case allowing a child from the aid project to enjoy ten years of education – a first long-term project. In 2008, all 30 children successfully completed their first year of schooling. Staff can also get involved in the project by writing letters to the children and thus extending and intensifying their contact with them.

But TAKKT is not only involved in Mumbai. Each division also supports social projects on their own responsibility. For example, KAISER + KRAFT EUROPA used payments from supplier agreements to sponsor a school for mentally handicapped children and young people. The TAKKT company donated a minibus to the Bodelschwingh School in Sindelfingen, to be used for trips to the swimming pool, to city and cultural facilities, or for shopping.

Acting to protect the environment
All TAKKT divisions are dedicated to avoiding environmental impacts and preserving resources. Every product in the range is checked for its environmental friendliness, which also applies to products the company produces itself in Haan under the EUROKRAFT brand. For shipping, the subsidiary companies use environmentfriendly packaging materials which can be recycled.

Protection of the environment can only be effective if the entire supply chain is involved. Therefore strict guidelines are also applied to TAKKT’s suppliers. For example, printing companies predominantly use nonchlorine bleached paper in the production of catalogues. Companies in Germany also have to be ISO certified and comply with the Eco Audit Directive of the European Union.

Promoting climate protection
TAKKT Group is proud of the fact that, with its business model – mail order – it is able to make a contribution to climate protection. The principle of mail order is to transport goods from the manufacturer to the end-user as efficiently as possible. This means keeping transport routes as short and the resulting emissions as low as possible. A further ecological benefit of mail order, in comparison to selling through sales representatives or brick-and-mortar retailing, is that no CO₂ emissions are caused by the seller needing to visit the customer or vice versa. Catalogues produced from renewable and CO₂-absorbing raw materials represent a further positive contribution of mail order to the ecological balance sheet.

To help further raise public awareness of the climate protection issue and to underline corporate responsibility, TAKKT took part in the Carbon Disclosure Project for the third time in 2008. As part of this initiative, more than 3,000 companies worldwide, 200 of them in Germany, are asked to set out their strategies for reducing CO₂ emissions. In Germany the project was initiated by the Bundesverband Investment und Asset Management e. V. (BVI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Its objectives include providing the public with better information on carbon dioxide emissions and thus helping to stimulate sustained protective measures. TAKKT will continue to support this initiative and will participate in the survey again in 2009. Further information on the Carbon Disclosure Project can be found at www.cdproject.net.