home
frankly speaking podcast

#22: Antje von Dewitz: How 'responsibility' applies to all sizes of company

Listen to Antje von Dewitz, CEO of the mountain sports outdoor products manufacturer Vaude.

Frankly Speaking welcomes Antje von Dewitz, Chief Executive Officer of the mountain sports outdoor products manufacturer Vaude, based in rural southern Germany. Vaude has won awards as Germany's greenest company and Antje is an ambassador for the Economy for the Common Good, served as vice president of her industry body, the European Outdoor Group, and she is a past winner of Vanity Fair's Changing Your Mind award.

Listen in and share our conversation about:

  • Why making Vaude a sustainable company
  • How to convince suppliers to change, to become carbon neutral
  • Criticisms of the Germany Supply Chain Act and what we can learn from it?
  • Sustainability being perceived as a burden for a medium-sized company
  • Why liability is a necessary part of due diligence
  • Difficulty of strengthening workers’ rights in non-democratic countries
  • Being one of a few women business leaders in the mountain sports and outdoor goods industry
  • The question of growth and scaling up a sustainable business
  • Taking sabbaticals

“Compare sustainability to digitalization: You would never say that you're too small to be digitalized. If you're not going to learn it, you're going to be erased by the market. I think it's the same thing with sustainability. It is doable! It's the responsibility of every company to know what they do, to know about the things they produce, also outside of Germany. So no matter what size you are, this is the beginning of being capable of responsibility.”

‍

Antje von Dewitz in Frankly Speaking

‍

You may also like these episodes

43:12

#123 Have the CSRD and European standards delivered on sustainability?

How is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) playing out in practice and what lessons can be learned? Listen to Frank Bold’s own Sustainability Researcher Lorena Bisignano, and Filip Gregor, Head of Responsible Companies and member of EFRAG’s SRB.

40:24

#122 What China’s New Security Regulations Mean for EU Sustainability Laws

What do China’s new supply chain security and counter-extraterritoriality rules mean for European companies trying to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence? Listen to Katja Drinhausen, Head of Programme Politics and Society at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS).

‍

29:53

#121 Julia Otten & Amandine Van Den Berghe: Environmental Due Diligence in the CSDDD - What's Next?

What does meaningful implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive look like in practice? Listen to Julia Otten, Senior Policy Officer at Frank Bold, and Amandine Van Den Berghe, Senior Lawyer specialising in value chains, trade and investment at ClientEarth.

‍