The company as a cell of the economy, is the ideal place for the implementation of environmental or social initiatives that permeate positively to employees and their families. As an economic entity, it also shares this impact with other stakeholders and can encourage its business partners to adopt the same standards. 

In August 2021, Estafeta announced its adherence to the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, which in Mexico has only 800 members and aims to focus corporate efforts on the most relevant issues on a global scale. 

The Global Compact focuses on 10 principles related to Human Rights, Labor Standards, Environment and Anti-Corruption and crosses with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

In an interview, Astrid Martínez, manager of training, internal communication and social responsibility at Estafeta, shares with us the reasons for joining this initiative and the benefits it brings. 

How has Estafeta approached its Corporate Social Responsibility strategy and how does it connect with the Global Compact? 

Estafeta is a company with a strong aim to serve, community support and environmental care inherited from our founder, Gerd Grimm, who was always aware of the important role and social impact of a company, especially a logistics company like Estafeta. Based on his legacy we have been building our vision of social responsibility. 

42 years after our founding, we are clear about the path we want to follow; we want more than to be socially responsible, we see sustainability as a broader concept that we take to every area and process of the operation and an intelligent way of doing business. 

In 2016 we aligned our social responsibility efforts with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), doing so gave us a path to follow, we also decided to make our social responsibility report in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators. 

What are the advantages of being part of the Global Compact Mexico? 

Since 2019 we had evaluated the possibility of joining the Global Compact, but we did not consider being ready, we had to consolidate certain actions and measure the results we already had. I think it was the right strategy since at this moment we can take more advantage of the benefits offered by being part of the initiative, I visualize the following: 

• Aligning the company's actions to international indicators allows us to be more certain that we are being part of a positive impact. 
• Measuring our results year after year, with a methodology generated by international organizations, allows us to compare ourselves in order to evaluate our achievements and have visibility of what we need to improve. 
• Exchange of experiences with sustainability leaders from companies in the same line of business or others on a global scale who share their best practices, experiences and results. 
• Being part of the different accelerator committees, Estafeta currently participates in a working group on environmental issues and in the gender equity committee, thanks to which we have identified important areas of opportunity that we are already working on. 

An important advance we have in Estafeta, of which we are very proud and which is the result of all of the above, is the Carbon Footprint Committee, in which various areas participate; it is a space for analysis and promotion of sustainability initiatives, I am thrilled to see the commitment of all areas to promote projects and allocate the necessary resources to achieve the objectives set. 

Being part of the United Nations Global Compact represents being at the point of action, firstly, to be part of focused global solutions and also to learn about the processes and actions necessary to be part of that universe of companies that are encouraging others -suppliers, allies or business partners- to join the internationally defined efforts to achieve objectives that, if not met, put at risk the possibility of all of us to move forward.