Sustainability is one of the biggest trends in the furniture industry – as it is in every industry. Every business is making sustainability a strategic issue, and rightly so. But what definition of sustainability is being used? The term has a wide scope, and while some of its elements, such as CO2 footprint reduction or circularity, are very prominent in societal narratives, there are other aspects that deserve to be talked about more.
One issue in that category is occupational safety. The current situation is not due to a lack of intention, but more because the subject itself can be hard to talk about. Here, we will explore why that is, and how occupational safety can become a core part of our industry-wide mission.
Safety at Every Level
At Henkel, occupational health and safety is one of the focus areas of our company-wide sustainability program. In Adhesive Technologies, this comprises a multi-level analysis covering our own manufacturing processes, our customers’ operations, and the end products consumers buy.
In our operations at our sites, we do everything practical to ensure the health and safety of our workers: striving for zero accidents and implementing overall conditions that are safe and don’t compromise health. This on its own is nothing new: every company today has high standards in this area.
But our safety remit extends wider than that: it also includes our customers’ operations. We consider occupational health and safety in the context of our products, and how they are used industrially at various client facilities. In this area, we help our customers stay ahead of increasing standards and regulations. We also have our own governance models, through which we evaluate the chemicals we use and how they are used, so we can assess both hazard and exposure to determine risk.
End-users are not only interested in healthy furniture, but also in how the furniture is made. They want to know, whether the manufacturer is doing everything possible to use the best and most sustainable technologies. Nevertheless, this could be characterized as a ‘simpler’ area of health and safety – but when it comes to talking about it, this is where things get highly complex.
Trust and Innovation Must Go Hand in Hand
Every consumer assumes that a product she or he buys is safe. That’s not a selling point – it’s a minimum requirement we expect from the companies who sell products to us.
Therefore, if a company advertises a product as being ‘safer’, it leads people to ask: “Wasn’t it safe before? Are other products not safe?”
That’s why it can be sensitive when furniture makers and their suppliers want to talk about safety. They can easily find themselves on the defensive. But we must embrace the subject: it’s an essential part of the overall sustainability package that we, as an industry, need to fulfil.
So, how do we overcome this? There are two things we can convey. One is confidence and trust, which a company merits if it has long-standing experience and governance on the topic of safety. The second is innovation: not merely adhering to existing standards but setting new ones. Always trying to advance.
Alone, legacy or innovation might not be enough. But together, they are a powerful combination.
Safety and Sustainability as a Core Business Goal
In the adhesives industry, operator safety is an urgent and growing topic, driven (among other things) by updates to the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) legislation. This leads to a sharp increase in new products entering the market – and to a considerable amount of uncertainty about the optimal next steps.
Amid such a fast-changing and potentially confusing landscape, who can offer that crucial combination of long-term trust and commitment to performance? We, at Henkel, have not just embraced sustainability and all its constituent topics, but have integrated them into our business strategy and culture. We have implemented a rigorous methodology for mapping and tracking sustainability contributions across the entire adhesive portfolio. We added this as a KPI, against which we regularly report and review performance. All our units now plan, short-and long-term, how they will increase the share of sales from products that are positively rated. In other words, sustainability isn’t something we do on top of our core business: it is in fact our core business.
This integrated approach is what enabled us to become a market leader in many areas, including products that enable operational safety. It paved the way for our Micro Emission PUR hotmelts – a technology we have offered since 2003. It supports our array of credentials from external bodies, including EcoVadis Platinum and the 2022 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. And it makes us more than a product supplier: we are a partner who can offer our experience and expertise, guiding our customers through what can feel like a forest of regulation.
There will always be more ways we can improve and push ourselves further. Right now, occupational health and safety is something many companies concern themselves with internally – but few are brave enough to talk about more widely. Let’s address that together. If you would like to get talking about safety, please get in touch.