GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION

“TAKE URGENT ACTION TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACTS.”

he climate crisis is the biggest challenge mankind is currently facing. The increase in industrialization worldwide is playing a major role in altering the climate. The textile industry ranks just behind the oil industry in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and even ahead of transportation and power generation.

What’s our objective?
Protecting the climate means cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as these are one of the major causes of climate change. As a responsible company and part of society, we’re committed to doing everything in our power to minimize our detrimental environmental impact at our headquarters in Gersthofen. We’re also determined to make the manufacturing partners in the supply chain more climate friendly.

How do we contribute?

By 2023, we aim to achieve climate neutrality at our headquarters by maximizing energy efficiency and using renewables.
We also aim to cut the carbon footprint at all deuter sites and our production facilities across the globe.
However, deuter wants to do much more than just compensate for carbon emissions. As a lot of energy is used in fabric production in particular, we believe the greatest potential for efficiencies lies here. First of all, we’re consulting our business partners to find ways of identifying our footprint accurately. Then we need to take steps with our partners to reduce that footprint.
Sustainability is reflected in our strategic product development from the get-go. Before embarking on the development of new products, we investigate the degree of sustainability we can incorporate. We’re also consistently improving them so that they last longer, are easier to repair, or are made from recycled or certified materials.
Our policy is to incorporate existing options into product planning. In terms of innovation, we will proceed with concepts for sustainable materials and products so that at least 50% of our products are made of recycled core materials by 2025 at the latest. We’re facing a number of major challenges in this respect. We need to close material loops, develop plastics without petroleum and launch new technologies that save resources.
Our materials and product experts are experimenting with new approaches to turn our vision into reality. In this case, interacting with other companies and the Textile Alliance (e.g. in the circular economy expert group) is vital. What’s more, we’re enhancing in-house systems to provide performance indicators and make progress easier to evaluate.
As part of the bluesign® partnership, we work with our suppliers and manufacturers to create more resource-efficient and environmentally friendly products and production processes.
We also strive to make improvements further down the supply chain. This is where the consumption of energy and chemicals is highest. We help our suppliers to manage chemicals so that the environment, wastewater and climate are not polluted unnecessarily. Training courses, flyers and certification (e.g. bluesign®) help to put our message across.
And not just products. The packaging we use should also be as sustainable as possible. Which is why we’re working on material-saving and recyclable alternatives to our current packaging.
We’re also encouraging our co-workers to pick sustainable transportation solutions like JobRad.

For more details about the steps we’ve taken: Climate Protection, Environmental Protection.