Accelerating Our Sustainability Ambitions

announced its new climate target “50 by 25,” which marks an even more ambitious approach to reducing carbon emissions than before. By the end of 2025, the company aims to have reduced at least 50 percent of its emissions from its operations related to sales. And by the end of 2035, the new vision is that carbon emissions should have reached a net-zero level.

Within sustainability, there are new and increasing demands and requirements on companies, both from customers and from society as a whole. As always, Trelleborg wants to be proactive. ‘Protecting the essential’ is the new framework for how Trelleborg works to accelerate its entire sustainability performance.

“In addition to emissions reduction targets, Trelleborg is working toward circular material flows, which means a higher share of bio-based and recycled materials. We are also improving the wellbeing of our employees in various ways, monitoring our supply chain even more closely, and becoming even more involved in the local communities in the places where we operate. I am proud to say that despite the challenges we see in our markets since the pandemic outbreak, we manage to really focus on strengthening our sustainability efforts,” says CEO of Trelleborg Group, Peter Nilsson.

Driving progress

Already today our business areas drive progress within sustainability and report on a regular basis. Since this spring, business area management groups have worked to further set their business area priorities and activities in the three new sustainability focus areas: Operations, Compliance and Social Engagement (see below to learn more). The business areas will accelerate setting and reaching their respective sustainability priorities, supported by Group tools and task forces such as the new Polymers for Tomorrow Task Force, Global Chemical Task Force, the Compliance Task Force and new tools for internal reporting and communication. To support their work further, internal governance has been strengthened.   
 

Some activities are mandatory for the business areas, such as producing a draft Climate Roadmap to enable reduction of carbon emissions aligned with the Group’s target. Other priorities depend on local accelerating requirements in each respective market.

In parallel, Trelleborg Group will continue to communicate around sustainability in Annual Reports and on our website, and going forward, the ambition is to add sustainability
cases and KPIs in the quarterly reports.   

Educating internally

Our new sustainability approach makes us future fit, and will yield even more market opportunities. Internally, it is also important to accelerate the training and education of our
employees. 

A new sustainability e-learning is one such example, which is available for all employees with computer access. It gives an introduction to the UN Sustainability Development Goals, and to the new sustainability strategy features with special sections about climate as well as circularity – taking even more care about using material resources wisely under the motto “reduce-reuse-recycle,” which marks a new phase in Manufacturing Excellence.

Sustainability is really exciting. The whole financial sector focuses more and more on finding sustainable companies to invest in. We want to make sure that Trelleborg is one of their best choices.

Atop the Bengaluru facility stands a 500 square meter solar panel array. With Bengaluru’s 300 days of sun annually, it averages 250 kilowatts of energy production per day, covering the workday needs of the entire 2,000 square meter office floor, with its 76 employees. 

“Our pilot study showed a need of around 48 kilowatts of energy to power the lighting, workstation, access control, air conditioning and server redundancy in the office floor,”
says Nanjunda Swamy, Manager – Metal Processing Unit, who managed plant maintenance at the time of the project. “The solar installation covers all this and more.” 

In general, Trelleborg strives to avoid harmful substances within its products. However, unavoidably some chemicals used for our specialty compounds and products are classified as posing a risk to human health and the environment.

“The Global Chemical Task Force is a forum of chemistry specialists who work with R&D in our business areas,” says Jose Luis Losa, Group Environmental Manager and GCTF coordinator. “We monitor the global legal framework for the chemicals that we use and provide recommendations and guidelines for their safe use or substitution in critical applications.

Continuous advancement

Jose notes that Trelleborg is continuously advancing. “We’re always innovating and looking for better alternatives,” he points out.

“We created the Global Chemical Task Force to support Trelleborg’s business operations by sharing recommendations and expertise on the use, and/or substitution of materials and chemical substances in markets where Trelleborg operates. We document and record the work with Trelleborg’s internal Restricted Materials List, and we provide tools and support to the local operations along with information about chemical legislation.”