Competencies
Our vision of sustainability is that we want to develop into a circular brand. This means we want to look at how we can integrate sustainability and circularity principles in all aspects of our business operations. This is a continuous process of analysing, adapting, learning and improving. We want to be transparent in what we do and what we achieve. For example, by looking at our business processes, production processes and HR processes and, together with our stakeholders, looking at the impact we have as a company and where we can improve.
We have made a conscious decision not to prioritise one stand-alone initiative over another. We have incorporated sustainability into our entire business operations by integrating it with specific business strategies. For example, our HR sustainability principles are part of our HR strategy. And our principles concerning health and safety are included in our Health & Safety strategy, and rolled out to the entire group from there. This means we can be simultaneously active in multiple areas and make rapid progress. It also fits our view that sustainability is not a stand-alone issue but is actually an integral theme of our organisation.
This is a very important point for our theme of “our solutions”. It is important that we look at sustainability and circularity and make informed decisions, particularly during our design process. We have a clear process for this. Right from the start, when drawing up the specifications of a new product, we ask questions about sustainability and circularity. For example, in what parts can we use recycled materials. Or where can we source the parts that we do not produce ourselves? And whether the proposed supplier meets our purchasing conditions. We will start using so-called Life Cycle Assessments as part of our design process in 2024. This means we will analyse the environmental impact of new products during the design phase. And if we see opportunities to reduce that impact, we will do so in advance rather than afterwards.
We started a baseline measurement in 2023, taking the year 2022 as a reference. We collect data again every year and compare it with the data from 2022, our reference year. In the meantime, we determine the goals we wish to achieve for important, measurable components: our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). As a result we can measure and communicate our progress every year.