Objectives, Measures and Indicators

Green Spaces/Biodiversity

The natural areas in our portfolio contribute to the wellbeing of both residents and the environment in a number of ways. We therefore want to maintain and care for existing spaces so that they can fully develop their social and ecological potential.

We aim directly for an ecological balance when planning new constructions, for example, through compensation planting, greenery on roofs and vertical surfaces, and by planting trees, bushes and wildflower meadows. The measures are included in the development plans and reviewed against the approval requirements from local authorities. Our residential environment organization assists with this planning and reviews target attainment.

We always include soil sealing and flood protection in our new construction planning. It is our aim to keep unavoidable soil sealing from car and bicycle parking spaces to a minimum when carrying out vertical expansions and densification construction measures. One form this takes is through mobility concepts, where the parking area can be reduced through car sharing or charging stations, for example. We are developing new construction planning measures that use backwater installations and roof greenery to absorb sudden water surges from heavy rainfall. We collect flooding information for our drainage plans and include potential rain management measures such as reservoirs, trenches and run-off troughs. Retention area planning, which serves to provide flooding areas for running water, is included in the approval phase.

We also aim to protect insects and other animals by treating our natural spaces with care. We review the site for existing populations during planning for construction and modernization measures, install beehives on building roofs – as we have at our office in Berlin, for instance.

Waste Management

Our customers can protect the environment by creating less waste and increasing the amounts they recycle. We actively support this, and have, for example, commissioned a service provider to sort through domestic waste and separate the recyclable waste. This allows us to reduce residual waste by approx. 50% and recycle a greater amount of waste. In turn, our customers benefit from lower waste surcharges and ancillary costs. 203-2

With our new construction projects, the design of the outdoor garbage collection points is an opportunity to exert a little influence on the behavior of our tenants. We are currently developing standardized, modular concepts for outdoor garbage collection points that provide customers with easier handling and thus can help boost the willingness to separate garbage. We are also looking into the installation of barrier-free garbage collection points that are set into the ground and are more easily accessible.

Tenant Information

Our customers’ energy and water consumption make up a considerable part of the resources consumed in the portfolio – and this is something we can only influence to a limited extent. We therefore regularly provide our customers with information about how they can save energy in their normal daily routines – for example, with the Caritas electricity check. We bring information to our customers with our customer magazine “zuhause” and various flyers – explaining, for instance, how modern heating units work and how to heat your home efficiently. The aim is to animate our customers to conserve resources.

Safety Obligations

Our tree stock is listed in a cadastre and cataloged. This gives each tree an identification number. We meet our traffic safety obligations by conducting regular review and inspection rounds and survey the condition of our portfolio. The processes we have in place to meet our operator obligations are laid out in our Group guidelines and detailed in an obligation document. This is updated every two years. The maintenance procedure for oil heating units is also laid out here, amongst other procedures, to prevent ground contamination from leakage of hazardous substances.