6 Sustainable Development Goals

Our Commitment To Global Sustainability

“Everyone of us is a stakeholder in the future of our planet. What I want to do is support good initiatives that contribute to sustainable development”.

– Bas de Reus, CEO Levi9

There’s no denying it; Levi9 operates in a polluting industry. The nature of IT means there’s an inevitable environmental impact from what we do. We can’t avoid this, but we do have a duty to be aware and do something about it.

Here are the United Nations Goals chosen by Levi9 and what we’re doing to support them:

#3. Good health and well being

A few years ago, one of our founders Bernhard van Oranje suffered from lymphoma cancer. This experience made him aware that there was no foundation for Lymhoma cancer in the Netherlands and an international gap for raising money for fundamental research against Lymphoma cancer. So, he started a foundation called Lymph&Co which raises funds for fundamental research. Bernhard is very committed to this cause and Levi9 is a strong supporter of his mission.

In addition, every year Levi9 participates in the Dutch Hundred (“Hollandse100”). This event includes 10 km skating and 90 km cycling, and the purpose is to collect donations for the Lymph&Co foundation. We encourage customers to join us and throughout the year we hold fitness check-ins and skate-training events in preparation.

And in Serbia, our teams donate blood 2 or 3 times per year. This actually takes place in the office.

#4. Quality education

Personal development is one of our strategic pillars. Our promise to our people is that we will support them in their personal development in every phase of their career. We do this because we believe that education in the broadest sense of the word helps people to have a fulfilling life.

We also believe that quality education has a close relationship with gender equality. Education helps people to become independent and make healthy lifestyle choices. Many of our people recognise the importance of good education and especially getting the opportunities to develop.

We support local community education facilities in different ways. That includes donating learning equipment and computers to schools and students. We also support internships and develop master class programmes for young professionals.

#5. Gender equality

We’re proud of our inclusive culture. It’s something that Levi9 takes really seriously across all it’s locations, whether in the Netherlands or Eastern Europe.

We regularly monitor the gender balance to check that it’s heading in the right direction. There’s broad support across all offices. Interestingly, in locations with a more egalitarian background (post-communist countries) there’s generally a more even distribution.

Levi9 inspiring offices

#8. Decent work and economic growth

We promote challenging work and a safe workplace. Living conditions in countries like Serbia, Romania and Ukraine are different compared with the Netherlands. By positioning our company in those countries, we’re all able to support their economic growth as nations by providing skilled employment opportunities. We also provide the best-possible working environments to help raise living standards. This alone isn’t going to make a difference overnight. It will take many years to get to the level we are used to in the Netherlands but by growing and investing in the local communities we’re able to contribute to them as well.

We also set up local projects to help stimulate the local economy. For instance, we’ve adopted a farming village in Romania. It had a school building verging on collapse and the Levi9 office helped to renovate the school, helping with computers, education and Christmas gifts. We can’t help an entire country ourselves, but we do contribute.

#12. Responsible consumption and production

We use local products and recycle our waste. We spend money; We decorate our offices. We drink coffee. We eat our lunch. We celebrate our successes.

By making conscious decisions about how we spend our money, we can help other local businesses to flourish and reduce our carbon footprint. Our starting point is to be a responsible citizen. And we aim to compensate for what we use. We take very good care of our people and their families and we support initiatives that make the local communities stronger and happier.

We believe that sustainability is more fun, fulfilling and sustainable when you work on it together. By giving our local operations a lot of freedom in where they want to put their money and efforts, we get much more buy-in from our people and that’s where the magic happens.

We have one very concrete goal which is to compensate for our CO2 footprint. Aside from that, we keep an open mind as to what else we can do. Our current initiatives include:

● Greener lunches and snacks and from local providers.
● Reduced use of plastic bottles in the office.
● Conscious recycling of our waste.

Levi9 ecology awareness

#13. Climate action

We think before we act. For us, there’s no way to completely avoid leaving a carbon footprint. Travel is an important part of our business. We’ll always consider face to face contact an essential part of our collaboration, both amongst levi niners and between Levi9 and our customers. It’s important for bonding, building trust and stimulating creativity and innovation. But due to the global pandemic, we didn’t travel as much in 2020 and most of our levi niners worked from home. Things went well which means we know can travel less than we did in the past - which will help reduce our CO2 footprint. But how else do we reduce the impact of our travel arrangements on the environment?

One way we currently do this is by delivering services to companies who make a valuable contribution to slowing the effects of climate change. In fact, we have a qualification process in place that considers elements of sustainability of our prospects’ business before we decide to formally engage.

Although we can’t exist without consuming energy, we do want to do it in the most responsible way by supporting compensation initiatives and exploring green energy possibilities. We promote initiatives like Levi9 bikes, use of electric cars, conference call facilities and combining customer visits to reduce the number of flights taken.

And in our office spaces, we’ve even installed ‘green walls’ to reduce CO2 and produce cleaner air.

Our CSR Partners

“I am super proud of what our people do and how committed they are. We celebrate what people do and how we can influence positive change.”

— Paul Schuyt, CEO Levi9