on the path to climate neutrality • Hotel Designs

With transparency being as important as sustainability, the shower and tap manufacturer based in Germany’s Black Forest region, has already achieved some of its milestones in 2021, and as a result, all German sites are now climate-neutral in terms of direct emissions and energy consumption. At the beginning of the year, the international sites also switched to green electricity, making an annual savings of over 26,000 t CO2.

At the German plants, in Wasselonne, France, and in Shanghai, China, supplementary energy efficiency analyses have identified potential further savings of electricity, utilising block-type thermal power plants and photovoltaics, peak load and solar irradiation planning. In Shanghai, the heating system for the electroplating baths is already based on heat pump technology. All international production plants have also set their own sustainability targets for water, waste, and energy.

The net result is that by the end of 2022, all international sites will have switched to green power and achieve climate neutrality in terms of direct emissions and energy consumption. All site emissions are measured and made transparent for the entire Hansgrohe Group as part of the Corporate Carbon Footprint project. An Operational Sustainability Board headed by the Chief Operations Officer, Frank Semling, has also been installed across all international sites to identify and monitor sustainability potential.

In addition, Hansgrohe expects all A-suppliers to sign a Green Company Agreement in the future – a commitment to comply with environmental management requirements. Research into alternative, more environmentally friendly materials for products is also in full swing. To this end, Hansgrohe is working intensively with its partner Materialscout.

Hansgrohe supports the 1.5-degree target of the Paris climate agreement, and feels strongly about following the formula of reduction before compensation.

“Our plan is to successively decarbonise the company,” said Steffen Erath, Head of Innovation & Sustainability at Hansgrohe. He is at the helm of a strategic initiative founded in 2020 that drives Hansgrohe’s green transformation a little further every day with innovative approaches and practical recommendations. “This process is costly and requires a lot of effort, but compensating for climate damage would probably cost us more.”

Another focus of Hansgrohe is on water. “Water is life and our passion,” said Hans Juergen Kalmbach, Hansgrohe CEO. “That is why we protect this valuable resource and consistently implement all measures necessary to achieve our ambitious sustainability goals.”

Today, Hansgrohe already has showerheads in its portfolio that use up to 60 per cent less water than conventional products – without compromising the showering experience. The entire product portfolio will be converted to water- and energy-saving products. In production, too, water is protected through closed water cycles in the individual manufacturing plants. In addition, research is being conducted into a vision of a completely climate-neutral bathroom.

A future orientation towards the principle of the circular economy also plays a major role in the company’s sustainability strategy. The idea behind this is to conserve natural resources by reprocessing resources that have been used once, and making them available again as production materials. The manufacturing plants are already melting down production rejects in order to use them again as raw materials.

Keeping to the essence of the logo ‘In Touch with our Planet’, Hansgrohe is passionately committed to its social responsibility, now and in the future: for water, for the climate, for the cycle. From now on, this attitude will be conveyed by a signet that Hansgrohe will use in its sustainability communications: a drop of water stylised as a fingerprint.

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Main image credit: Hansgrohe