Whiplash Team, 21st October 2022
The commitment to sustainability
The consolidation of new social shifts, such as responsible consumption that demands ethical behaviour from brands towards people and the Planet, forces companies to incorporate social and environmental responsibility into their DNA.
In the transition towards a more sustainable economy and society, the need to preserve and cultivate the planet’s renewable resources requires the commitment and action of all social actors.
From the business sector, implementing strategies to progressively replace the use of unsustainable materials with others derived from renewable resources such as wood, is a way to adapt the social and ethical purpose of the organisation making it tangible through its products.
Consumers, for their part, assume their responsibility by changing their consumption habits to align them with the common purpose of preserving the planet: they buy local products to reduce their carbon footprint, use cloth or recyclable bags for purchases, check if the packaging is made with recycled products, just to cite everyday examples. The culture of “use and throw away” is slowly receding, giving way to a return to more eco-friendly practices and habits.
The 9 R’s of the Circular Economy
The commitment to sustainability implies less polluting production and consumption models. That is, adopt clean energy and raw materials from renewable resources, practice responsible consumption and put into practice the 9 R’s of the Circular Economy:
- Reject what we do not need.
- Reduce our consumption.
- Reuse or reuse products in good condition discarded by another consumer.
- Repair to extend the life of a product.
- Restore an old product to modernize it.
- Remanufacture or rebuild manually or mechanically what we need.
- Redesign with criteria of sustainability and ecological design.
- Recycle raw materials to create new products.
- Recover materials with incineration to generate energy.
Toward a more circular economy
Organisations are slowly but surely beginning to understand that a commitment to sustainability must be intrinsic to their purpose, and more and more are adopting sustainable production models.
An example is the Belgian cleaning product manufacturer Ecover, for example, which uses ecological or recoverable raw materials as its main components within a production model that tries to consume as little energy as possible.
Or the Spanish Garnica, which manufactures plywood boards, and whose vertically integrated business model favours sustainable plantations and promotes the development of new wood-based products to meet the needs of various sectors.
In sectors such as construction, for example, wood is an efficient option over brick or steel, not only as a decorative element but also as a structural element, thanks to innovation in the development of new sustainable materials.
In the case of industry, there are non-polluting alternatives to replace plastic in the manufacture of bags and packaging elements, including fabric, paper, or cardboard, all derived from organic raw material.
The commitment to sustainability requires ethical and responsible behaviour from brands that translates the business purpose into concrete actions and helps, ultimately, to build a more responsible society using the resources that the planet offers us.
