Sustainability as promise of quality

Sustainability plays an increasingly important part in your company strategy. How do you define sustainability for yourself and your company? Businesses have to be actively responsible in their area of influence – economically, ecologically, and socially – toward their employees, the environment, and society. This conviction has always been a part of Tesa through-out the generations and really is a living tradition. From that standpoint, sustainability always has been very important to us. Unlike in earlier years, we talk more intensively about it now and guide our activities accordingly at the product level. We understand that responsible action always is linked to a continuous improvement process. This means for example that world-wide, we pursue clearly defined and ambitious environmental goals and also implement them within a clearly defined time frame. We joined the Global Compact of the United Nations in 2006 and thus demonstrate how important this commitment is to us. How do these demands influence product development?
For us, responsible behavior starts with the selection of suppliers, raw materials, and packaging and continues throughout production all the way to later disposal. Part of our business strategy is the development and implementation of environmentally safe production technologies. Already today, we manufacture most of our products without using solvents. As a result of the talk about climate change, our customers increasingly desire sustainable products. This trend has reached an important sales channel already – office supplies. By paying attention to the market, we’ve set up a sub-brand Tesa Eco-Logo. This brand combines recycled materials, renewable resources, and environmentally safe technologies. In the longer term, sustainability will become an issue also in the home-improvement market. As market leaders for tapes, we actively guide the trend there also: For example, by offering products which help consumers save energy and reduce their CO2 emissions. Tesamoll for sealing windows and doors, the Tesa Iso System for inside roofs, and insulating foils for windows are examples. Along with this, we’ll expand our sub-brand Tesa Eco-Logo in the home improvement market this year with a new sustainably produced and completely reworked line of masking tape. These new products are solvent-free and consist of at least 55 percent biological raw materials. How do you implement sustainability in your communication with the market and also with…