Sustainability has been an essential element of GROHE's corporate strategy for almost 20 years As early as 2000, the global brand for complete bathroom solutions and kitchen fittings committed itself in its "principles and guidelines for sustainability" to continuously improving all products, processes and services in terms of protecting the environment and conserving resources. Since then, GROHE has set new industry standards, applying its 360-degree sustainability approach that incorporates employees, suppliers, customers, processes, products and the company’s social contribution alike.
With the aim of becoming the first leading manufacturer of the sanitary industry to achieve carbon-neutral production by 2020, GROHE has once again stepped up its pledge. In July, as part of the "GROHE goes ZERO" initiative, all five production plants worldwide, as well as the logistics centers in Germany, were converted to run on green electricity. With the start of the new fiscal year in April 2020, the sanitary manufacturer will offset unavoidable CO2 emissions through two compensation projects.
"More than ever, manufacturers like GROHE are in demand to take on responsibility and strive towards more sustainability," said Thomas Fuhr, CEO Grohe AG. "For years now, we have been investing not only in research and development in order to produce intelligent, sustainable solutions, but also to a large degree in a resource-saving value chain. With GROHE goes ZERO, we are now setting an example for the entire industry: We are actively addressing the CO2 challenge by increasingly avoiding emissions and, if this is not possible, compensating for them."
The sustainability initiative is seamlessly linked to numerous measures that are taking place at the GROHE plants, promoting the long-term reduction of the carbon footprint and conserving resources: The brand has invested in block heat and power plants, was awarded the silver certificate by the German Sustainable Building Council for the plant extension in Klaeng, Thailand, and built a state-of-the-art test laboratory in Hemer, Germany. GROHE also uses advanced technologies that increase sustainability, such as the material-saving 3D metal-printing process which has been launched this year.
As a result, GROHE has been able to increase its energy efficiency by 24% and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by around 40% since the introduction of its sustainability program in 2014. This means that the global brand has already far exceeded its 2021 targets of 20% respectively.