among other topics. During its first six months, the EMS section In Germany, UniCredit Bank AG purchased only carbon-neutral
on UniContact - which includes information on how we are heating for its facilities, employed only carbon-neutral mail
addressing environmental challenges, particularly climate change delivery services and purchased offsets for work-related rail travel.
- was viewed by more than 1,500 colleagues before year-end. The
site also collects feedback and flags unanswered questions. Moreover, we have dramatically reduced business travel Groupwide
and encourage our colleagues either to travel by train or to limit
In Italy, we have made significant changes in how we assess their travel when alternatives are available. To this end, we increased
and manage our environmental impacts, particularly in terms of the availability of our video-conferencing tools to facilitate virtual
centralizing our management processes. meetings, limiting travel and CO2 emissions.
There has been a Groupwide effort to reduce paper
consumption, with a pilot program currently in place in Italy.
Combating climate change
As of April 2013, a number of branches will simplify their As our Group remains committed to fighting climate change, we
operations to substantially reduce the paperwork required to are working to shrink the carbon footprint of our operations and
open a current account. The number of forms will be halved to finance renewable energy sources, as well as to study ways to
during the project’s initial phase, with the goal of reducing the reduce financed emissions.
total paperwork by two-thirds.
In Romania, we reduced the length of our client paperwork, In 2012, we continued to focus on achieving our abatement
including our General Business Conditions form. target and reducing the carbon footprint of our operations
in line with the commitment we made in 2008. Scope 1 and
2 greenhouse gases from our operational emissions totaled
F CUS 375,773 tons at the end of 2012, representing a decrease of 24
percent from the baseline year. This remarkable achievement,
which substantially exceeds our initial target, requires us to
assess the possibility of setting a more ambitious long-term
target for 2020, by which date we had previously committed
Solidarity and the environment to making a 30 percent reduction in emissions. The reduction
we have already achieved is largely attributable to our space
UniCredit supports projects that combine social inclusion optimization and facility renovations, as we have made
with environmental issues in ways that deliver social benefits. extensive efforts to reduce our use of office space across
While we are focused on making computer technology more Europe. UniCredit is reorganizing some 25,000 employees
through its 25 City Plans projects. These City Plans will
accessible to individuals and companies, the bulk of what we
reorganize our Group’s main European headquarter facilities - in
do in this area involves supporting local non-profits and their
Milan, Bologna, Bucharest, Hamburg, Moscow, Munich, Prague,
responsible disposal of electronic goods. Rome, Turin, Verona, Vienna, Warsaw and Zagreb - based on
three principles: the consolidation of our operating locations;
In 2012, within the framework of our partnership with Re-Tech
Life Onlus in Italy, we had 2,200 laptops, PCs and printers
F CUS
reconditioned and donated to more than 200 organizations.
Re-Tech Life employed 28 people for this purpose, including
students and prison inmates. In Austria, we worked with
Arbeit für Behinderte (AfB) to create 11 jobs refurbishing IT
equipment. In 2012, UniCredit Bank Austria donated more than Supporting the WWF Oasis system
500 pieces of equipment for refurbishment.
The UniCreditCard WWF supports WWF Oasis, the
organization’s largest conservation and habitat-
Paper reduction is also a priority for our internal operations, protection program. As of December 2012, roughly
with default two-sided printing now standard in many of the 25,000 cards were in circulation, and more than 13,400
countries where we operate. At our new UniCredit headquarters of these were newly issued in the course of the year.
in Milan, we have reduced the number of printers, and
In 2012, cardholders donated an estimated €176,600
employees will be required to input a personal code in order to
to maintain hiking trails and to support educational
print their documents.
programs, monitor protected areas, provide legal
In the past several years, we have chosen to shift from using assistance, and promote responsible tourism and
recycled to ecological paper. By doing so, we reduced our research. The WWF Oasis system protects 100 natural
recycled paper consumption by circa 40 percent in 2012 from sites across Italy, visited by more than 500,000 people
the previous year. each year.
UniCredit · 2012 Sustainability Report 73