Our Commitment to Sustainability
April 12th 2019, by Michaela Shaw
Our conversations about improving transparency in sourcing and materiality are focused on people—our clients and our team members who build and work with our products. Since our goal is to continue creating the best products in the most sustainable way, we’re continually evaluating and measuring our progress, and pushing our investment to the next level. This week, we’re sharing the latest updates on our sustainability initiatives:
Elevating, always
Our industry moves fast and information related to sustainability even more so. Our goals are steep so what’s on my plate in the near term to help keep us at the forefront?
- We’re currently developing and expanding Red List Free claims within our product families, and officially have 5 Red List Free product families.
- Currently, we have 3 Healthier Hospitals compliant product families included in our collection.
- We’re offering 41+ products which are Indoor Advantage Gold certified. These IAG Certified products can contribute to LEED and WELL.
- We’ve made tangible changes to improve the health of our products: applying water-based clear coat instead of solvent-based, switching to a formaldehyde-free paper-backing, and moving away from the use of PVC edge-banding
- Over 30 individual suppliers are included in our supply chain analysis to better understand every ingredient in our products...a single vendor could supply up to 52 individual components!
- We have dozen of products on mindful MATERIALS, allowing specifiers to more easily find our products.
Responding through design
Offering healthier products to our customers and providing more sustainable workspaces for our team members and end-users aligns with our human-focused design philosophy. We’re constantly asking ‘How can we improve? How do we evolve?’ Listening to our community and learning from each other allows us to respond through design. We’re excited about these latest initiatives and invite you to visit our newly updated Sustainability page.
Our way forward
We are just beginning our sustainability journey, and we recognize that we have a long way to go. The work we have done so far is only the start, and our goals for the future are ambitious, which we think they should be! Here’s a peek into what we hope to accomplish:
- We’ve begun developing Declare labels for some of our products with more to come this year.
- We are committed to ensuring all of our products are free of flame retardants, and guiding our clients towards specifying fabrics that are compliant as well.
- We will begin to look at the environmental impact of our manufacturing practices and seek to decrease our footprint.
- True sustainability starts at the very beginning of the design process, so we’re excited to start looking at new materials and processes to create healthier products from the start.
- We’ll be visiting more markets, attending more events, and continuing to be your partner in navigating this complex landscape.
The opportunities for improvement are endless. We're proud that we've taken the first step and are excited for what's to come.