In the Lyon region, entrepreneurs committed to the ecological transition

In the corridor of the metro, in Paris, in November 2015, François Duchâteau came across a poster of the COP21, the international summit on climate change which is being held at the same time in the capital. “We will not be able to tell our children that we did not know”, proclaims the slogan. The message turns his life as an entrepreneur upside down. “I had the cruel truth before my eyes. We are heading towards the extinction of humanity if we do nothing. I suddenly came out of denial, and I decided to change course, to act on my scale, that is to say in my company ”, says the CEO of SLAT, a company specializing in fire fighting equipment.

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The former senior executive of Schneider Electric studied the issue of ecological transition with pragmatism. “I assembled my steering committee, and I told them that I had a new motivation: to save the planet! “, remembers the manager of the company of seventy-five employees, located in Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or (Rhône), north-west of Lyon.

It remained to convince the troops. “We have always been committed to a very high quality approach to designing our products. I thought about applying the same rigor to reduce the carbon footprint of our company as a whole. The objective was to achieve carbon neutrality, not to multiply by five the turnover ”, says François Duchâteau, 61 years old.

Basic environmental policy

The production of products, the delivery of raw materials, the travel of suppliers and employees, not to mention the operation of the buildings, everything has been scrutinized, in order to establish a table of around fifty indicators. Carbon neutrality is now 98% reached, that is to say, the balance between the C02 issued by the activity of the company and that saved or compensated. Examples of CO emission reduction2 : the development of teleworking reduced employee travel by 28%. The company promotes the purchase of clean vehicles through loans of 2,000 euros, without interest, from its employees, with a donation of 500 euros if the vehicle is used for the journey to work.

In terms of compensation, SLAT supplies electricity to its employees’ vehicles for their personal needs. Another key objective is to double the lifespan of products. The CEO now wants to divide carbon dioxide emissions by five. “Carbon neutrality is a limited concept, which can be misleading. Let’s stop talking about money before considering the climate issue. It is my priority, and by doing that, I have the impression of progressing, of preserving the activity of the employees, of thinking of their families ”, adds the entrepreneur.

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