From the shaky foundations of the Paris Climate Agreement to the ever-increasing line of troubles with oil spills and other environmental catastrophes, the last couple of years have been rather wearying for all of those interested in reducing the ecological footprint and restoring the damage done to the planet. In the world of today, putting additional emphasis on corporate responsibility might be the most important way to achieve this very important goal.
If you are interested in how we do our part in reducing the ecological footprint, read on and we will briefly introduce you to some of our central short-term and long-term strategies of corporate responsibility. At the same time, we will briefly highlight all those factors that we have going for us as well as those issues that we are planning to tackle in the near future.
Wood is good
According to the recent report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), wooden products, when they are made out of sustainable sources of timber, can go a long way in reducing the carbon footprint. In fact, an international team of expert specifically stated that wooden furniture requires much less energy and by extension much less carbon emissions to be produced than the furniture of the same size and type made out of plastic or metal. On top of it, wooden products will continue storing carbon for many years, thus completely offsetting the greenhouse gases related to their production.
- Wooden designs cause less carbon emissions
- Wooden products completely offset the greenhouse gases released during their production
- Wood designs comprise a majority of our offer
- We give priority to wooden products when expanding our offer
This is one thing that is definitely going for us as majority of our designs are made out of wood, as this was the preferred material of mid century designers. But, at the same time, we decided to always give priority to the wooden products when expanding our offer in the future.
Technology in service of ecology
As a company dealing with production of furniture in several workshops and factories, we also have need for warehouses where we store the finished designs, but also rely on different modes of transport to get the products to our customers, wherever they are. All of this put together without any special attention paid to the ecological footprint of our business would be rather problematic. So, we developed a number of short-term and long-term sustainability and corporate responsibility strategies that will help us further decrease carbon emissions wherever possible using various technological or engineering approaches and innovations. Some of the steps already undertaken include:
- Equipping all our buildings with energy-efficient LED lighting
- Equipping radiators in our offices, factories and workshops with thermostatic valves
- Changing insulation in all our buildings to match the highest standards
- Work from home opportunities for our employees to reduce transport-related carbon releases
- Equipping office technology with automatic power shutdown systems
Some of our other short-term goals that we plan to achieve include:
- Replacing all of our company cars with hybrid cars
- Installing cavity wall installations in all our buildings
- Replacing all heating and cooling equipment with energy efficient models
Reducing the material consumption
It is well-known that the production itself, regardless of the end product, is the single most impactful carbon releasing activity, so recycling, as well as reduction of material consumption (and by extension, reduction of material processing) can go a long way towards carbon offsetting. There are several ways we aim to take advantage of this opportunity.
For starters, our team of designers, engineers and craftsmen work together on every design, planning carefully how to bring the original design specifications to the workshop or the factory in the best possible manner. Wherever possible, we rely on contemporary industrial processes that might have not been available when the original was first produced in order to reduce the excess material. This not only reduces the energy consumed, but also the cost of the finished product. On the other hand, when it comes to the production of our wooden designs, we do the opposite and focus on traditional craftsmanship which is always 100% eco-friendly with little to no harmful emissions.
- Reducing excess material
- Making production more energy efficient
- Employing traditional craftsmen for 0 carbon emissions
But, products are just one part of the whole supply chain. Packaging, transport, printed manuals and assembly guides are just as much part of our production process as finished designs. So, out strategies took those into account too. Some of our short-term goals include:
- Producing thinner boxes for less material consumption
- Replacing printed manuals and assembly guides with freely available PDFs
- Placing our workshops in close proximity to sustainably managed forests to eliminate transport-related carbon emissions
Carbon neutrality by 2030: Our long-term strategy
Some of the best ways to contribute to carbon offsetting are still not readily available either due to technology still being in development or because it still hasn’t reached the global markets. In either case, reaching the goal of carbon neutrality might take some time and we have chosen year 2030 as the point by which we hope that we can proudly say that INTERIORNA has become a completely carbon neutral company. The achieved short-term goals have already allowed us to reduce our ecological footprint by almost a third and we remain dedicated to further expanding our efforts and always taking care of our impact on the planet that we all depend on.