Together with our partners for a sustainable planet

Our Goal

We tackle sustainability with our partners

Sustainability is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We accept this challenge. Together with our partners, we are moving step by step towards our goal:

By the end of 2021, we want to calculate the CO₂ emissions of our supply chain and set an ambitious goal for CO₂-free upstream products.

New Standards

We set new standards – for an ecologically and socially responsible supply chain

In our Supplier Code, we have laid down standards that our suppliers undertake to comply with and also impose on their suppliers and partners. This code gives our employees clear guidelines for selecting our partners and working with them. We are continuously refining the Supplier Code and adapting it to our ecological and social standards. For example, it requires suppliers to pay their employees living wages that are above the legal minimum wage. Our suppliers also commit to producing and distributing their products and services in a CO₂-neutral manner.

Logistics

We monitor our carbon footprint – for lower transport emissions

We avoid and reduce emissions wherever possible. Our Logistics is key to this:

• We hold workshops to create awareness among employees. In webinars they learn how to calculate the ecological footprint of Logistics.
• We systematically record the relevant data on air and sea freight emissions and set our goals on this basis. We want to reduce air freight emissions as far as possible.

Climate-neutral partners are companies that ensure that the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere does not increase as a result of their actions. They work continuously to avoid or at least reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their own operations and in key areas of their value chain, wherever possible. Greenhouse gas emissions that they are not yet able to avoid are offset in full.

Lin Braatz, Head of Corporate Procurement and Supply Chain, ista International GmbH

Recycling of our devices

We focus on recyclability – for sustainable devices and healthy environment

Our aim is to achieve a closed materials cycle. We are taking action in several areas to ensure our devices are as sustainable as possible:

• We increase the recyclability of individual materials.
  Our devices are designed from the very outset to be recyclable. We take back old devices and have them prepared by specialist partners for reuse. We make sure we send materials that have special storage or assembly requirements to qualified partners.
• We conduct regular audits at our service partners'.
  We conduct regular audits at our service partners' to ensure the highest possible recycling rate. These audits cover disposal requirements among other things.
• Use of a decision-making tool for handling recovered devices.
  The tool evaluates the options recycling and reuse in terms of financial added value and CO₂ emissions and so helps in decision-making.

Cooperation

We are farsighted in managing goals – for fair cooperation with our partners

The Procurement & Supply Chain department is responsible for the manufacture of our products. It works together with our suppliers in Europe and Asia to implement our production processes and ensure our partners maintain our quality standards. The ista national organisations are largely responsible themselves for the procurement of services and materials. ista Service Partner Management assists the ista branches in Germany when selecting and looking after their partners. In order to ensure that the ista service partners maintain a high quality of service in their daily work, we provide them with IT equipment and train them in its use. The use of tablets improves communications in the processing of orders and helps save paper.

We have set ourselves milestones for 2021 and beyond which will enable us and our partners to move closer to our goal in defined stages:

1. To enable us to make holistic decisions, we plan to make CO₂ emissions the second yardstick (alongside costs) for evaluating our products and processes.
2. We also feel responsible for the emissions of our transport routescontract manufacturers of hardware components (Scope 3) and want to develop suitable measures for further CO₂ reductions.
3. In the first step, we want to reduce our CO₂ emissions by optimising transport routes.