Recycling comes last
Environmental activist Annie Leonard said it best: “Recycling is what we do when we’re out of options to avoid, repair, or reuse the product.” In the reduce, repair, reuse, recycle mantra, recycling comes last.
If you want to reduce your environmental impact, make pipes that last for generations. There’s no need to recycle what never should have been produced in the first place.
No one under fifty has lived a year without an Earth Day and every company faces questions from skeptical customers who have a keen sense of what they consider environmentally acceptable:
- Will our products be worth the investment?
- Will our pipes harm the ecology of the area where they’ll be installed?
- What is the environmental footprint of the products?
Honest answers ask for transparency. And that’s what we promise to give you.
“We’re not just making pipes. We’re making long-lasting water infrastructure that protects one of the most precious elements.
Because the greenest product is the one you don’t have to replace.”
W. Stangassinger, M. Ausserwinkler & T. Andersson, Amiblu Management Board
A word we try to avoid
We’ve chosen to use the word sustainability as little as possible. Why? Well…
Sustainability demands to not take more from nature than we can give back.
But we do take more than we give. No human economic activity is yet sustainable.
We have no business using the word sustainable, until we learn to provide water networks without interfering with nature’s ability to regenerate itself and support a wide variety of life.
Going forward, we will be talking about environmental responsibility. We will make it clear that every one of us must not only be conscious about the climate crisis but also do everything we can to protect our planet for the generations to come.
LCAs for every single product
Cradle-to-gate studies show that 80-90 percent of GRP products’ environmental impact is determined at the design stage. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool for learning which raw materials or manufacturing stages are the most critical for the environmental performance of the product.
We’ve set up the most comprehensive LCA (life-cycle assessment) platform in the pipe industry. This allows us to carefully evaluate and choose the most environmentally friendly raw materials, designs, and production processes for our products.
To date, we’ve compiled LCAs for over 1,200 products, which represent about 80% of our sales. We then condensed the big reports into easy-to-read, EU-standardized Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) and can, within hours, provide the data to stakeholders who want to learn more about the environmental impact of a specific product.
Using our LCA scenario generator, we can quickly compare the Carbon Footprint of various products from all Amiblu plants in a cradle-to-gate scenario. Furthermore, we can educate stakeholders on the impact of raw material selection and steer product choice towards greener and more responsible options.
We can also calculate the Environmental Cost of every project in monetary value and, thus, put a number on nature’s precious contribution.
Our dedicated team of environmental scientists works hand in hand with all departments and hierarchy levels, as we want the reduction of environmental effects to be part of the job of every single employee, especially when there’s a global water crisis.
LCAs are only a point of departure
Learn more about how GRP outperforms other materials and how Amiblu seeks to battle the world’s water crisis.
© Amiblu Holding GmbH, 2023