The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) ended in Glasgow last month and marks a new impetus for tackling the climate crisis. With the primary goal of specifying emission reduction plans to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the summit once again made clear that now more than ever, industry role models are needed.
According to GROHE, the company has pursued a CO2-neutral and resource-saving value chain for 20 years with milestones such as introducing its first circular products and gathering valuable insights in the field of sustainability transformation in the past year.
GROHE is this year´s Lead Partner at the German Sustainability Award 2022 for the Transformation Field resources and reportedly is already setting new goals for the upcoming year.
The annual status of GROHE’s implementations for the year 2019/2020 have been compiled in GROHE’s third sustainability report. For example, the brand was able to reduce its water consumption in production by 38.7 percent and thus significantly exceeded its target of 20 percent, which was first set in 2014.
Simultaneously, GROHE took its actions to a new level with its circular value creation and resource conservation and launched its first four Cradle to Cradle Certified® products.
GROHE has also eliminated plastic from all product packaging was a goal was established in 2018 and turned out to be a great challenge involving many different departments while needing to account for the safe ttransportation of GROHE’s diversified product range.
To date, GROHE has already been able to eliminate 34 million pieces of plastic packaging and is now on track to reach its goal in spring 2022.
Thomas Fuhr, Leader Fittings, LIXIL International and CoCEO Grohe AG explains: “To us, becoming plastic free is mandatory, but it was a huge challenge, and the creation of plastic free packaging took us longer than expected.
“We acknowledged with our Plastic Free Initiative that real transformation takes time, but at the same time, great new, own packaging solutions were set up by our project teams in the factories with the result that, for example, a change within one product packaging resulted in a saving of 26 tonnes of polybags per year.”
GROHE is now official Lead Partner for the Transformation Field “Resources” at this year’s award ceremony and congress, held on December 2nd and 3rd 2021 in Dusseldorf. Thomas Fuhr will deliver a keynote on the opportunities and potentials of ‘Green Building’ in the plenary session of the German Sustainability Day’s congress.
Jonas Brennwald, Leader, LIXIL EMENA and Co-CEO Grohe AG concludes: “Sustainability is firmly anchored in LIXIL’s and GROHE’s DNA. Current events around the world, such as extreme weather and the scarcity of resources clearly show us how urgent it is to do even more and how important it is to look at the crisis in its entirety.
“For our brand strategy, it is therefore essential that we take our customers along and offer them solutions with which they too can contribute, such as energy- and water-saving products”. With COP26’s outcome in mind, the brand is already in the process of tackling the next challenges, such as expanding carbon
neutrality to its own supply chain and eliminating all single-use plastic.”
