Following its win of the inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility award at the 2018 BKU Awards, GROHE has continued to make great leaps forward in its commitment to sustainability, supporting initiatives that are striving to reduce plastic waste in our world’s rivers and oceans as well as streamlining and improving its own processes as a manufacturer.
GROHE’s most recent and perhaps most prolific pledge yet is its global aim to be the first leading manufacturer in the sanitary industry to achieve carbon-neutral production by 2020. The GROHE Goes Zero campaign is already well underway with all five production plants worldwide and its German logistics centre being converted to run on green electricity as of July 2019. In April 2020, GROHE will offset unavoidable CO2 emissions through its support of two compensation projects.
GROHE will support the restoration of boreholes in two districts in Malawi where half of the population lives without access to clean drinking water. Currently one third of the existing boreholes cannot be used due to wear and tear however with GROHE’s pledge, they will support a project that repairs damaged boreholes and also provides maintenance to ensure a clean water supply is available for the communities there long-term. GROHE will also provide support to a hydropower plant located in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. All the power generated by the power plan is fed into the North Indian transmission grid and replaces conventionally generated electricity.
With a shared vision for clean water through the reduction of plastic in the ocean, GROHE has also recently joined forces with architect Marcella Hansch and the Pacific Garbage Screening Project. The architect and her team are in the process of developing a water platform that will collect plastic waste before it damages ecosystems in the world’s rivers and oceans. As well as financially supporting the project, the two teams will work together to create further conversation and awareness in the public of the global plastic epidemic.
As a result of its numerous sustainability initiatives, GROHE has been able to increase its energy efficiency by 24% and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by around 40% since the introduction of its sustainability programme in 2014. These figures highlight that GROHE has already far exceeded its 2021 targets of 20% respectively.