Four questions for Marius Rödder, who joined corsus as a consultant in July 2021:

What did you do before you came to corsus?

I was lucky enough to be able to study extensively, with stays in Bonn, Hamburg, Manchester and Bochum. This led me to a postgraduate degree in Applied Sustainability. For my final thesis, I developed a method to automatically calculate the carbon footprint of consumers based on individual spending data. After graduation, I continued working on the project for over a year before moving on to new shores at corsus.

corsus advises on sustainability. What do you associate with sustainability?

Sustainability has many facets, which is why it is not an easy question to answer. I want to say it has a lot to do with a holistic perspective. Throughout my studies and work, it has become clear to me time and again that a holistic view is needed to find good answers to the questions of our time. If you don’t look at all the essential aspects, there is a great danger of merely shifting negative social or ecological impacts instead of preventing them. For example, we can reduce the climate footprint of a food product, but this may come at the expense of biodiversity. Only if we keep both in mind can we make truly sustainable decisions. If you are serious about sustainability, you have to look at things holistically.

Is there an issue that is particularly close to your heart?

For me, the big goal that is very close to my heart is the good life for all. I am convinced that in the necessary great transformation, which understandably scares people, there is enormous potential for that good life. If we are courageous and actively shape our future, we will end up with the needs of more people considered and met, and as a society we will be happier than we are today. For instance, I see great opportunities in a further democratisation of communal structures, decision-making and design processes. If you empower people by providing them with spaces for exchange, the mandate to shape their community and by trusting them, the most wonderful things happen. Of course, this presupposes individual capacities and thus social and gender justice, which we must actively promote. Last but not least, we urgently need to stop pitting social concerns against ecological ones. Then will we be able to co-create for the common good.

What are you working on at corsus right now?

One focus of my work are the environmental impacts of food. We are currently advising in several public projects on how these can be effectively captured and communicated to stakeholders. For consumers, this includes product labels, while capacity building and the provision of tools play a major role for companies. In addition to the carbon footprint, which many people are familiar with by now, there is a whole range of other important factors that need to be taken into account. This brings us back to the holistic approach I mentioned earlier. One exciting question is of how to break down the complex interrelationships of a global food system in such a way that they become comprehensible, at the same time keeping an eye on all the relevant aspects. Of course, we juggle many ideas about how to do this among the team and benefit from our diverse professional backgrounds and our respective experience. That is certainly one of the most fun aspects of the job.