Sustainability
Protecting what is important
At Vetrotech, we believe that safety comes first. And that sustainability is a natural part of that effort. That’s why we have implemented verifiable footprint-minimizing practices throughout the organization, re-invigorated our innovation focus on sustainable products and processes, and publicly declared ambitious net zero carbon goals. It’s why we’ve embraced a leadership role in influencing healthy building policies in countries around the world. And why everything we do we do with full transparency—because true sustainability has nothing to hide. Protecting people and property is what we do with care and pride, and with an acute sense of our social responsibilities. If we’re going to build a sustainable future together, it has to start with integrity, ambition and the best of intentions—from people who care about each one of us, and the future of all.
How do we work with sustainability?
Vetrotech is implementing sustainable practice across our operations and through our supplier chain in as many ways as we can.Here are some of those efforts and goals—there are more to come, and when they do, we’ll communicate them as quickly and completely as possible.
THE FOUR SUSTAINABILITY PILLARS
Vetrotech is implementing sustainable practice across our operations and through our supplier chain in as many ways as we can. We have split our initiatives into 4 pillars. Learn more about our efforts and goals—there are more to come, and when they do, we’ll communicate them as quickly and completely as possible.
Aiming for true net zero
Vetrotech has always been on the safe side, and our uncompromising dedication to safety naturally extends to our environmental responsibility. That understanding has driven us to be ambitious, but also accountable. Too many in our industry use sustainability claims to obscure rather than clarify, resulting in a lack of credibility that hurts everyone. The base material in our products is glass from a minimum of 13% pre-consumer waste.
Integrity is in the details
Credibility is a product of trust, and trust requires transparency. That’s why Vetrotech is leading an industry push to transparency in sustainability activities—starting with our own efforts. We campaign to make standardized EPD’s for individual products the industry standard, rather than product families, and make ours easily accessible online. We include only verifiable lifecycle assessment data in them, without omission regardless of results, another industry standard we hope to set.
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Innovating smarter ways forward
The Vetrotech innovation focus is on working towards a circular business model that reduces virgin material use and waste, and avoids landfills if at all possible through reuse and recycling. This includes eco-innovation of products that have an improved CO2 footprint through use of less raw materials, and process improvements in our plants. There are challenges—specialty safety glass by definition includes interlayers, films and sealants that make them harder to recycle just now.
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Our life’s work
Safety and sustainability are part of the same conversation—an uncompromising approach to safety is impossible if it doesn’t also include action for the well-being of communities and the environment. As leaders, we can influence suppliers and choices of external labs to ensure a responsible ecological footprint throughout the development of our products, from raw material selection to final delivery. Our manufacturing and testing sites employ air, water and waste management techniques that help us be better neighbors while also supporting local economies.
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F.A.Q
Impactful sustainability starts with a common understanding of what’s right and what’s not. In our industry, we’ve seen the term used all too often as a tool for promotion and misdirection. Actions that undermine its credibility, when our communities and planet can least afford it. The following FAQ’s provide answers to some of the most common questions we get. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, please don’t hesitate to reach out using the contact form here.
Vetrotech has always been on the safe side, and our uncompromising dedication to safety naturally extends to our environmental responsibility. That understanding has driven us to be ambitious, but also accountable. Too many in our industry use sustainability claims to obscure rather than clarify, resulting in a lack of credibility that hurts everyone. By being transparent in everything we do, we believe we can be a force for good in transforming standard practice away from greenwashing to meaningful sustainability. We have high, publicly-declared and third-party verified sustainability ambitions for the company, and the industry, people and planet.
An EPD that is product-specific provides environmental data that has been calculated exclusively for its product. It is based on supply chain data only connected to that product, providing the most accurate lifecycle assessment of a given product. The data is not hidden behind convenient averages or global assumptions, it is as transparent as it can be. At Vetrotech, we believe transparency is a key driver of sustainability. That is why we work with product-specific EPDs’s for all 27 products in our European fire range, with an aim to have individual product lifecycle assessments for the whole range by 2030. Having them also helps to monitor our progress towards carbon neutrality with precision and once again, with transparency.
All our environmental product declarations can be found on the web platform of our EPD operator, Environdec.
They’re also available at our download centre on vetrotech.com
A health product declaration (HPD) is an externally-verified document, covering a complete disclosure of the chemical compounds contained in our products. Those chemicals are then assessed against several official lists (SVHC, GreenScreen, etc.) and the results of those screenings are presented in the HPD. They provide assurance that the materials in our products are safe. HPD’s are available for our US customers.
No. Specialty safety glass by definition includes interlayers, films and sealants that make them harder to recycle just now. But we are working on them—our innovation teams have circularity, which includes recycling, as one of their primary focuses.
The challenges in end of life recycling of our products means the recycling we can and do achieve today is related to production and distribution. Stillages are made of certified sustainable wood and can be reused or recycled by customers, and we are exploring ways to retrieve them for reuse without adding excessive CO2 emissions. We recycle xx tons of normal glass cullets, xx tons of laminated glass cullets, and xx tons of tempered glass cullets, and are aiming for higher percentages by 2030. All waste wood, PET, aluminum, steel, paper and cardboard is sorted and recycled.
A fully circular product does not require any consumption of virgin raw materials and is designed to be reused or recycled. For now, the challenges to full recycling and responsible disposal mean we can’t be considered truly “cradle-to-cradle”—no one in our industry can credibly claim to be. So far we’ve achieved “cradle-to-gate”, and we are working hard to be even better—we are definitely on the right track!
Emission reduction in three steps. First, the total of value chain emissions are quantified, so we know where the overall emissions are coming from and what resources and technologies are needed to address them. Areas for improvements are identified to establish an action plan for emission reduction. Then, and only then, when almost all emissions have been eliminated, the remaining emissions may be compensated with carbon credits. We have a clearly-defined, independently-verified goal to be carbon neutral Group-wide by 2050.
For Green Building certifications, our products can help contribute to various credits. Most of the supporting evidence required for the certification is directly available on our download center.
