How we respect and live the environmental sustainability principles

CIRCULAR ECONOMY At Skaza, we are dedicated followers of the circular economy principles and have been employing the ideas of reuse, share, repair, refurbish, remanufacture and recycle to create a closed-loop system. In the past years, we have been working hard to implement these concepts into our production process by effectively returning waste materials back into the cycle to create new products. When introducing our own label, we took this idea to a new level and developed a system of the so-called multi-circular economy. This system enables us to close loops in more than one area. A great example of this are our Bokashi Organko composters: apart from being made with recycled plastic materials, they also play a key role in re-purposing organic waste, thus efficiently connecting and closing two loops. ENERGY SAVINGS AND EMISSIONS We take energy savings seriously, so our energy comes from 100% renewable sources. Apart from that, we do our best to reduce our energy consumption whenever possible. Some of the methods we use for reducing energy consumption are a system for heat circulation across the production plants and equipping our machine park with electric machines. PROCUREMENT, CONSUMPTION AND WASTE Thanks to our precise and meticulous planning and procurement processes, we manage to keep our waste production to a minimum throughout our manufacturing processes. Whenever this is not possible, we do our best to recycle a significant part of the produced waste, giving it a new life in a new product. SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL CHOICES One of the hallmarks of our success in following environmental sustainability principles is choosing sustainable materials for our production processes. We mainly incorporate two groups of sustainable materials in manufacturing our products: recycled materials and bio-based materials. Since 2014, we have increased the use of recycled materials by 150%. Nowadays, half of all plastic material that we use in our production process is recycled. This enables us to significantly reduce our CO2 greenhouse gas emissions and save precious energy. CONSTANT RESEARCH AND INNOVATION When following our environmental sustainability principles, we constantly push for better solutions, search for better materials, and create better practices. This is why we are dedicated to continuously improving our supply chain and looking for ways to make it more sustainable. This includes constant efforts to find, source or develop even better materials that further improve the sustainability of our production processes as well as help lower the price and improve the quality of the final products. SUPPLY CHAIN AND SUSTAINABILITY While we pay lots of attention to following environmental sustainability principles on our production plant, we also keep in mind what happens outside our facilities. Lowering the environmental impact of our supply chain is thus an important factor. This is why we are only working with partners who are able to help us improve our supply chain environmental impact by lowering the carbon footprint of the transport processes. QUADRUPLE BOTTOM LINE When monitoring our progress and evaluating our success, the economic point of view is understandably an important one, but never the only one. The triple bottom line as a framework with three parts, social, environmental and financial, has long been our main guideline when assessing whether our goals have been met. With further development of our brand’s identity, we have also added the concept of purpose that combines our mission, vision and values, and connects it to the 4Ps. The phrase people, planet, profit and purpose thus represents the four focal pillars of our development. OUR PRODUCTS Apart from following environmental sustainability principles in our manufacturing processes, we also create products that help the general public live more sustainably, thus further reducing our joint carbon footprint. One of the products that play the most important role in this process is the Bokashi composter. According to a study by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, our composter Bokashi Organko 2 enables a composting process that has a significantly lower carbon footprint than classic composting methods. The study showed that the carbon footprint of composting with Bokashi Organko 2 added up to 16.921 kg CO2 eq. during its projected 10-year product life cycle, while the number for the classic composting method added up to 452.81 kg CO2 eq. during the same period of time. ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PRINCIPLES AS SKAZA'S FOCAL POINT At Skaza, we take great pride in both following the environmental sustainability principles as well as setting new standards of sustainability in plastics production. The practices we mentioned above are a big part of our efforts, and we are dedicated to continuously improving our processes and lowering our environmental impact even further.