To achieve our goals, we rely on three pillars that are within our direct sphere of influence:

1. education for sustainable development

It is now obvious that in a world with seven billion people and limited resources, we cannot avoid learning quickly how sustainable coexistence works. There is no alternative! We must learn that our actions today have an impact on our lives tomorrow!

As a chocolate museum, we have an average of more than 550,000 visitors from all over the world every year. We are convinced that this is the right place to impart knowledge and values for sustainable development to people. We want to encourage our museum guests to make their contribution to a sustainable world.

This entire complex is summarized under the topic of education for sustainable development (ESD). At the same time, it is also the key to building a sustainable society.

This is why we invest in education for sustainable development. We are the first museum to be certified as an educational institution for sustainable development by both UNESCO (2019) and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (2018).

2. reduction of your own CO2 footprint

A key task in achieving defined climate targets is to reduce our own CO2 emissions by using new, forward-looking technologies and avoiding wasting the energy we use. To this end, numerous measures have been and will continue to be taken at the Chocolate Museum.

Since 2016, we have been using 100% green electricity to conserve resources. We obtain our district heating from a highly efficient combined heat and power plant. Last but not least, our e-bike as a cargo bike for inner-city deliveries makes a small but significant and highly visible contribution to improving our carbon footprint. The same applies to the renewal of the lighting by completely switching from light bulbs to LED lights.

3. climate neutrality through compensation measures

In 2018, we at the Chocolate Museum set ourselves the goal of achieving CO2 neutrality by 2023. We replaced this goal with a better one back in 2019:

We have taken action and have not only been operating the Chocolate Museum in a climate-neutral but also climate-positive way since 2019.

As the museum’s carbon footprint cannot currently be offset with technical measures, Gold Standard certificates are purchased every year, thereby removing CO2 certificates from the market.

In addition, the Chocolate Museum and its partner Plant for the Planet will plant around 35,000 trees every year. This is currently happening in Constitution on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Thanks to this significant overcompensation, the Chocolate Museum will be permanently climate-positive, i.e. it will remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than it emits.

These approximately 33,500 trees represent a considerable overcompensation of our CO2 footprint, so that we are climate-positive and will compensate our carbon footprint in the coming years up to the founding year 1993. We believe this is a pioneering measure.

Even if these topics have taken a back seat in reporting due to the current crises, they remain an important component of our corporate development.

We hope you enjoy reading our report and look forward to your feedback.

With best regards

Annette Imhoff and Dr. Christian Unterberg-Imhoff