How do we take care of our planet?

In terms of all of us playing our part, it’s time to act, that’s for sure. The global campaign for World Environment Day 2022 —#OnlyOneEarth— calls for profound policy and decision-making change, change that will facilitate a cleaner, greener and more sustainable life, one that’s in harmony with nature, not against it. #OnlyOneEarth calls for collective and transformative action on a global scale to protect and conserve our planet.

• We’re using the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to support our current way of life, and our ecosystems can’t keep up with our demands.
• The degradation of ecosystems affects the well-being of 3.2 billion people, which is about 40% of the world’s population. We lose ecosystem services worth more than 10 percent of our global economic output every year.
• Air pollution causes about seven million premature deaths each year, one in nine of all deaths. Nine out of 10 people breathe unclean air, making it the most important environmental health risk today.
• The Earth has seen 20,000 years of change concentrated in just 170. Since 1850, human activity has increased CO₂ concentrations by 48%.
• Antarctica is losing 151 billion tons of ice a year, roughly equivalent to the weight of Mount Everest, according to data from NASA’s GRACE-FO satellite. This also means that in 70 years time, the homes of 200 million people will be below sea level.

Stepping up to the challenge of caring for our planet, MAPFRE has implemented key actions to reduce our CO₂ emissions and reaffirm our commitment to protecting our environment, not just today on World Environment Day, but every day:

• We’re improving the energy efficiency of our buildings, we’re installing photovoltaic panels everywhere we can to generate our own energy and we only buy electricity from renewable sources.
• We promote recycling. In 2021, 2,960 tons of waste were recovered, recycled or used in energy production processes. We donated more than 41,000 kg of computer equipment. In Spain, thanks to our commitment to the circular economy, we have obtained Zero Waste certification.
• We encourage teleworking and promote sustainable mobility, switching out our vehicle fleets to ECO-certified models, installing EV charging points, providing employee shuttles and cutting back on business trips.
• We’ve reinforced and modified our environmental commitments in underwriting, in line with our effort to transition to a low-carbon economy.
• We promote products and services with environmental criteria.
• For MAPFRE’s Volunteer Day, we planted trees and cleaned up degraded natural spaces. In addition, we collaborate with not-for-profits like WWF Spain to protect biodiversity.
• We’ve created the “MAPFRE Forest” from the reforestation carried out in 2021 to offset our carbon footprint in Spain and Portugal. This forest was born from the corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) compensation strategy, with the aim of promoting the recovery of ecosystems and preserving biodiversity.

A large part of these actions have allowed us to attain carbon-neutral status in Spain and Portugal in 2021.

At MAPFRE, we want to contribute to promoting sustainable transformation on a global scale. That’s why we’ve drawn up our Strategic Sustainability Plan 2022-2024, which serves as a framework to guide all our actions, commitments and purposes in terms of sustainability.

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