Products

FAQs

General

The award aims to encourage companies, freelance designers, students, and start-ups that offer products and services in Germany to engage in sustainable practices and to help anchor the principles of sustainable development more firmly in public awareness. It seeks to demonstrate that responsible action not only helps to solve social and ecological problems on a global or local scale but can also increase profitability and competitiveness. The challenges of climate change, resource scarcity, and species loss are intensifying. At the same time, the competencies of the sustainable economy in Germany are growing. Pioneers from all sectors have long demonstrated which solutions work and how practical transformation can be achieved. Now, the task is to spread their knowledge and experience widely. Therefore, the 17th German Sustainability Award recognizes 'beacons' with impact and radiance that make special contributions to transformation.

The award is hosted by the German Sustainability Award Foundation. To strengthen the project, the foundation collaborates with institutions, companies, and organizations.

From each field of transformation, 50 nominees, 30 finalists, and ten winners are selected. The awards recognize solutions that demonstrate particularly effective contributions to transformation and thus set an example in their market. It is about products, services, and systems that send the right signals for successful transformation and/or represent 'beacons' of their sectors.

The DNP helps companies, designers, students, and startups accelerate their own transformation, differentiate themselves positively in the market, and use sustainability reporting as a helpful tool. Since 2023, the DNP has also adopted a new methodology that focuses on industry-specific, significant issues and aligns with the new EU regulation CSRD and the EU reporting standards ESRS. With this new methodology, companies can come into contact with the reporting structures of the ESRS for the first time and gain insights regarding significant issues for their own industry. The profile can additionally provide important hints and prompts for discussion for their own transformation within the company.

The DNP enables exchange of experiences, transfer of know-how, and deep insights into transformation across all sectors. In the new formats of the DNP, industry winners, leaders from all competitions, associations, media, politics, and society meet. The winners each receive a complimentary honorary ticket for the awarding of the German Sustainability Award on November 28 and November 29 and the congress for the German Day of Sustainability.

With the DNP seal, pioneers, nominees, finalists, and winners can communicate their success against a scaled licensing fee based on company size.

The seal of the German Sustainability Award documents a leading position in the field of sustainability – towards customers, suppliers, media, and the financial world.

The 'Nominated' seal with the year can be used indefinitely by the company regardless of the further competition progress.

The 'Finalist' seal can also be used indefinitely by the company regardless of the further competition progress, with the year mentioned.

In the event of success, it is exchanged free of charge for the 'Winner' seal. The license revenues ensure broad participant outreach, excellent assessments, jury work of the highest standard, and professional organization of the events. They help keep the participation fees for the competitions low and the congress attendance free for NGOs and students, for example. The license fees are scaled according to the applicants' capabilities and are set with discretion.

The technology and research partner for the DNP for companies is the Berlin-based startup score4more. It specializes in creating differentiated sustainability profiles of companies and their evaluation, after its founders had supported the DNP for over ten years and significantly contributed to the methodological advancement of the corporate competition. score4more provides the digital architecture for research across all sectors and industries and the resulting company profiles.

 

Companies of any size, whether required to report or not, can create their profiles for free and thus use the platform to apply for the DNP. score4more has also developed the industry-specific scoring approach that enables comparison and evaluation of companies. The DNP utilizes the technological platform of score4more to represent thousands of companies, initiatives, and performance metrics in the competition, to evaluate them, and to identify the leaders of sustainability in Germany through transparent jury processes..

To the score4more website

For registering and creating a profile for your company and your sustainable products/services, please use the platform and services of score4more. The terms and conditions and privacy policy of score4more can be found as part of the registration process here on the score4more platform.

For general inquiries about the German Sustainability Award, please contact the German Sustainability Award office at buero@nachhaltigkeitspreis.de or +49 211 5504-5510.

Application

All companies of any size with a business headquarters in Germany, freelance designers, students and startups that offer products, services, and systems from all sectors for the German market are eligible to participate.

The application period runs from May 6, 2024, to July 19 2024.

To participate in this year's competition for the DNP Product, please create a solution profile with our research partner score4more. This can be done here.

Yes, you can participate in multiple DNP competitions with your company. An overview of our competitions can be found. here.

A processing fee is incurred for the application. Individual designers and teams, companies/agencies with up to 50 employees pay €250, companies/agencies with up to 300 employees pay €550, and larger companies/agencies pay €950 (each plus VAT). Participants who submit more than one application for the DNP this year will receive a 25% discount on the participation fee starting from the second paid application.

Students, startups (founded within the last five years), and emerging designers (students up to five years ago) can participate for free upon request until June 14, 2024.

Even in the case of success, no further obligatory costs are incurred for the participants, and participation does not obligate them to anything.

Up to three fields of transformation can be assigned to the solution profile, with the assignment of one field being mandatory. A detailed description of each field can be found here.

The solution visualization is a voluntarily designed poster that provides graphic support in the evaluation process. It increases the chances of fully capturing your solution and can positively influence the chances of success. The visualization can be freely designed or attached to the application using this template.

The visualization can be freely designed (web PDF in DIN A0 format) or attached to the application using this template.

score4more researches sustainable solutions that emerge from the company profiles. Only companies that meet a minimum level of sustainability are admitted to the DNP Product. This is determined based on the scoring by score4more.

No, only the nominees, finalists, and winners from each field of transformation are announced.

The congress (German Day of Sustainability) will probably take place on November at the MARITIM Hotel in Düsseldorf.

For general inquiries about the German Sustainability Award, please contact the German Sustainability Award office at buero@nachhaltigkeitspreis.de or +49 211 5504-5510. For specific content-related, technical, or organizational questions about the sustainability profile, please contact the team of our partner score4more at hello@score4more.eu.

Solution profile - content-related questions

The sustainability profiles reflect the previous methodology of the DNP, which is based on the most important transformation fields. These fields are derived from the United Nations 2030 Agenda, the goals of the EU Green Deal and the German government's sustainability strategy. The sub-themes also reflect the requirements of the EU taxonomy and the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the corresponding European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) as the new European reporting standard.

The transformation fields with sub-themes are (based on ESRS with ESRS ID):

- Climate (in particular climate protection and climate adaptation; E1),

- Resources (esp. circular economy and water; E5/E3),

- Nature (esp. pollutants and biodiversity; E2/E4),

- value chain (esp. employees and supply chain; S1/S2) and

- Society (esp. communities and consumers; S3/S4)

Each company is assessed on the basis of its sustainability profile. The profiles are sector-specific and reflect key sustainability issues for the sector in question. The profile includes:

- 1st transformation field (highest materiality in the industry; four criteria relating to measures and solutions)

- 2nd transformation field (materiality in the industry; one criterion relating to measures and solutions)

- 3rd transformation field (materiality in the sector; one criterion relating to measures and solutions)

- One indicator CO2e emissions of the last 3 years (Scope 1, 2 and 3)

- Further measures/solutions of the company

- Upload option for additional information

You can also find out more about the methodology here.

The information in the sustainability profile is based on a source document in which the company has published the information, e.g. a detailed product description or published information on the company's website. Other content that companies wish to add to their application can be added if it is also published. This mirrors developments in EU regulation and rating agencies: the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will further increase transparency and the importance of published sustainability performance for the EU Green Deal and Sustainable Finance through mandatory reporting. Rating agencies are also increasingly only evaluating published performance and not exclusively internally communicated performance. In this way, the DNP aims to create a positive incentive for greater transparency towards stakeholders and the public.

You select the sector in which your company is predominantly active, i.e. in which it generates the majority of its turnover or value added.

If you are unsure which sector is the right one in your case: As part of the registration process, you will be shown examples of the areas covered by a sector after selecting the sector. You can already find an overview of all sectors and industries on ourmethodology page.If in doubt, please contact score4more's methodological support team at support@score4more.eu for assistance with sector selection.

Key sustainability issues vary from sector to sector. In the social sector, social sustainability issues are material, while in energy-intensive industries, climate and energy issues are important. These industry specifics are mapped via the sustainability profile and the industry-specific selection of fields, sub-topics and criteria.

If your company has different divisions or sub-companies that are active in different sectors, a division can also create its own profile in a different sector. The prerequisite is that there is a delimitable sub-company and that the sustainability performance of the sub-company is published independently, e.g. via a separate sustainability report for the sub-company or independent descriptions in the report of the main company. The profile for the sub-company is created by a separate user and with a different company name.

To change your company to another industry, please contact score4more support at support@score4more.eu.

The profile focusses on a few key topics for your company's chosen industry and is based on the EU regulation ESRS. This makes it easier to compare industry-specific, material issues across different companies. If your company has provided and published sustainability services that are not queried in the profile, but you would like to communicate these to the DNP for the competition, additional input fields and an optional upload option for an additional document are available under the "German Sustainability Award" tab.

Only publicly accessible information can be considered for the DNP product. Therefore, please check that the information and sources provided can also be viewed by external parties.

The solution profile is only visible to you and the score4more team, which analyses the services described. As part of the cooperation with the German Sustainability Award, the information in the profile will be made available to the DNP in order to determine nominees, finalists and winners. In the future, registered company representatives will be able to control the visibility of their profile and decide for themselves whether they want to make their profile public or share it with their business partners, for example.

Solution profile - technical/organizational issues

Yes, the solution profile can only be edited online via the score4more platform.

In principle, you can access and edit your profile permanently and at any time. However, please note that - in the event of an application - only data that has been entered by 14 June 2024 can be considered for this year's call for applications for the DNP. You will still have access to your profile after this date. However, changes after this period will only be taken into account in the 2025 competition.

You can use the browser function to print the profile or save it as a PDF.

Please check your spam folder, the e-mail may have ended up there. If this is not the case, please contact score4more support at support@score4more.eu.

If you have forgotten your password, you can have a new one sent to you in the registration area of score4more under "Forgot password".

Yes, you can still access and edit your profile after the application phase (6.05.24 - 14.06.24). However, the information will not be used to determine this year's award winners outside of this period. They will be taken into account in next year's evaluation for the DNP Product Award.

If you have any further technical or organisational questions about the profile, please contact score4more support at support@score4more.eu.

Data protection

The results of the evaluation are treated confidentially - with the exception of the publication of the nominees, finalists and winners. The data will only be viewed by a small group of people directly involved in collecting and analysing the data and preparing the jury meetings; these are employees of the German Sustainability Award office and the assessment partners. The jury members are also bound to secrecy. Evaluations that are published are exclusively anonymised in the form of statistical averages and/or trend curves. Participants will only be published if they are honoured (as nominees, finalists or winners).

Your personal data will be collected for the following purposes:
- Participation of your company in the competition for the German Sustainability Award
- Evaluation of the application documents in the event of your company's participation

- In the event that your company is nominated:
- To coordinate the joint communication work
- If applicable, for the licensing of the seal

If your company is selected as one of the finalists:
- to coordinate the joint communication work
- if applicable, for licensing the seal

If applicable, for participation and involvement in the German Sustainability Day events

- Information about competitions in subsequent years

- Your data will be processed on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1, sentence 1 lit. a GDPR.

Personal data will be passed on to the members of the evaluation team and the jury.

Your data will be stored by the controller for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected. We always delete or block your personal data when the purpose of storage no longer applies. However, data may be stored beyond this point if this is provided for by legal requirements to which we are subject, for example with regard to statutory retention and documentation obligations. In such a case, we delete or block your personal data after the end of the corresponding requirements.

The General Data Protection Regulation grants you the following rights:
If your personal data is processed, you have the right to obtain information from the controller about the personal data stored about you (Art. 15 GDPR). If incorrect personal data is processed, you have the right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR).

If the legal requirements are met, you can request the erasure or restriction of processing and object to the processing (Art. 17, 18 and 21 GDPR).

If you have consented to the processing by the controller by means of a corresponding declaration, you can revoke your consent at any time for the future. This does not affect the legality of the data processing carried out on the basis of the consent until the revocation.

If you have any questions about data protection, please contact the German Sustainability Award office at buero@nachhaltigkeitspreis.de or +49 211 5504-5510.