Our long-term ambition is to create the world’s most sustainable carpets. It is a big challenge With an industry-changing potential.
The building industry is responsible for 40% of the world’s CO2 emissions and floors are part of the problem. Only 1-3% of all carpets are recycled. We want to lead the change in sustainability performance and innovation within our industry.
There’s a great potential to significantly improve the environment by thinking and acting differently. At Ege Carpets we've already come a long way. It’s an ongoing process where we continuously set up new goals and initiatives to get closer in fulfilling our long-term ambition. By 2030, we aim at reaching the below stated sustainability goals.
The Global Compact
At Ege Carpets, we never do anything half-heartedly. In 2010, we decided to endorse the UN Global Compact – the UN guidelines for working for a higher degree of social responsibility The UN Global Compact consists of 10 principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.
Principles on business and human rights
Human rights are a key aspect of our focus on social responsibility, starting with our employees and extending to the people in our supply chain. We've included UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in our specifications to our suppliers to prevent child or forced labour, differential treatment and discrimination and to support freedom of association.
Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the UN launched its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We support many of the SDGs through targeted efforts to create sustainable carpets, good workplaces and decent conditions throughout the value chain. However, weve chosen to dedicate our focus on four of the 17 SDGs directly linked to our core business: carpets. This is how we can make the biggest difference.
Responsible consumption and production
We use Cradle to Cradle product certification as a sustainability framework for our entire business. The idea is to manufacture products that only consist of healthy materials. The products must be designed to be incorporated into a biological or technical lifecycle after use. The company must endeavour to become carbon neutral and use 100% renewable energy, and the processed wastewater must, in principle, be clean enough to drink.
Finally, the company must be assessed for compliance with internationally recognised social responsibility standards.
Partnerships
We cannot solve the sustainability challenges we face alone. Partnerships within our own industry and across other industries are required if we are to succeed in making the world’s most sustainable carpets. Our CircleBack system is a good example of this. We would never have succeeded if both we and Aquafil had not entered into the project with an open mind and a willingness to invest time and resources in developing the solution together. We expect partnerships to become an even more important strategic tool for us in the future and to take both our own and our partners’ performance to new heights.
Sustainable energy
Green energy is not a part of our core service. On the other hand, we work with it at such a high level that it makes a real difference. 100% of our electricity consumption is covered by investments in renewable energy, which we purchase from offshore wind farms.
We’re also in the process of ensuring that our entire natural gas consumption is covered by investments in climate credits from biogas. In this way we contribute to ensure that more renewable energy is produced.
Climate action
For many years we have worked to reduce our CO2 emissions with great results. Now we have taken our effort to a new level. Our short-term targets have been validated by the The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which is a global body enabling businesses to set ambitious emissions reduction targets in line with the latest climate science.
We will adjust our production processes in order to reduce CO2 emissions and we will replace raw materials and ensure higher waste recycling to reduce emissions. This will significantly enhance our climate action in the next years. Learn more about our targets
