Sustainability passed on from mother to daugther company

Taken over by new owners, Danish company Polyvision faced the requirement to have its products certified for social and environmental sustainability. Now the company hopes that its efforts will pay off.

A so-called Cradle-to-Cradle certificate (C2C) is visible evidence that a product meets a number of requirements with respect to environmental impact and social responsibility.

And C2C certification is not without its financial advantages. The company can, for example, use the knowledge gained about the consumption of materials, resources and energy to reduce its consumption of resources.

Polyvision DK is the first Danish company to have products certified according to C2C principles. Two of the company’s best-selling product ranges – whiteboards and blackboards – are certified.

Watch a film about Polyvision

Certification – a requirement
The requirement to have a number of its products C2C certified was made of the Polyvision Group by Steelcase in 2007. Steelcase, the world’s largest furniture manufacturer, acquired Polyvision in 2000.

A sole employee at Polyvision DK was given the task of securing certification. His main task was to establish which suppliers supplied which products, and which materials and chemicals the components contained.

Polyvision DK found out that it takes around 30 sub-components, from almost as many suppliers, to make a board. The job to trace and identify the content of all sub-components took the employee six months, working one day a week.

Reluctant suppliers
The central unit for C2C certification in the US has allowed for the fact that suppliers are often reluctant to divulge the content of their components to customers. Therefore, such information is not shared with the customer directly, but with the certification office.

Timewise, it has been a challenge for Polyvision DK to achieve C2C certification. According to the company, they could not have done it without the help of Polyvision in Belgium. Despite the huge amount of work involved, Polyvision DK has not been able to generate higher sales on the two certified product ranges.

Polyvision nevertheless hopes that the certification scheme will give the company a competitive advantage in the long run, as more buyers learn that they can purchase good quality, produced in an environmentally-friendly way, at a reasonable price.

By regarding resource efficiency as a success parameter in the innovation and product development phase, Polyvision has also created a method of innovation which not only makes the products more environmentally efficient but also more user-friendly and simple.