Sustainability – for Hansgrohe SE, this is a concept that has always been an integral element of the company’s corporate culture. Hansgrohe SE has just became the first mixer and shower manufacturer in the world to release a Sustainability Report (Application Level A) certified by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Adopting internationally recognised, comparable standards, the report provides a detailed picture of Hansgrohe’s various commitments in the economic, environmental and social spheres. “We perceive social responsibility, environmental protection and a corporate sustainability policy as prerequisites that we must meet if we are to successfully continue our 112-year corporate history and survive in the market in the long run,” says Siegfried Gänßlen, CEO of Hansgrohe SE. “When we set ourselves these ambitious targets, we place great value on producing measurable outcomes which can be verified and managed by means of our Green Controlling system. In this way, we continue to promote sustainable practices in all our business processes. The Sustainability Report presented here lends transparency to our actions, and it invites the reader to engage in open, constructive dialogue with Hansgrohe.”
Specific examples drawn from all fields of activity
Initiatives designed to achieve sustainability exist in all areas in which Hansgrohe is engaged. The mixer and shower manufacturer has been developing water and energy-saving products for many years now. The most recent examples are the mixers in the Axor Starck Organic collection, which can achieve a flow rate of just 3.5 litres per minute. Today, products featuring efficient technologies already contribute about 25 per cent of net sales.
An integrated management system designed to enforce compliance with environmental, occupational safety and quality standards ensures that all ten of Hansgrohe’s production locations around the world operate at the same level. Numerous individual measures implemented with the aim of achieving greater efficiency in the use of resources or in recycling have succeeded in boosting energy efficiency by ten per cent since the year 2010. The ideas for these measures often come directly from Hansgrohe’s own employees. Social responsibility is just as much part of the Hansgrohe corporate culture, and it finds expression in the support for projects ranging from a scheme to safeguard the continued ability to work for older employees, holiday programmes for the childrenof our staff, and right through to aid projects around the globe focusing on environmental protection and on the sustainable use of water.
Ambitious sustainability targets
In 2009 Hansgrohe established its “Steering Committee Green Company”. The committee’s task is to formulate sustainability targets for all the business divisions and make them an integral element of the Business Plan. These targets stipulate, for example, that by the end of 2014 the Group’s CO2 emissions are to be reduced by twenty per cent compared with 2010 index values. Similarly, the targeted reduction of water consumption in manufacturing processes is ten per cent. In addition, the volume of hazardous waste is to be reduced by ten per cent, and occupational safety must be improved even further. The company is already well on its way towards achieving these targets, as is evident from the first set of results showing that water consumption – expressed as a ratio of cubic metres of water to the number of tons of products sold – has dropped from 10.72 to 8.26. This represents a reduction of about 23 per cent, or more than twice the self-imposed target.
Hansgrohe Sustainability Report available for download
In the spirit of environmental conservation, the Hansgrohe Sustainability Report will be released in digital form only. It is available for download by all interested parties at the following link: www.hansgrohe.com/sustainability
