Suominen has created a new Sustainability Agenda to support the implementation of its business strategy. The Sustainability Agenda defines Suominen’s stance on sustainability through its three focus areas and connects the company’s activities to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, the agenda includes concrete longer-term goals related to environmental and social responsibility.

The Sustainability Agenda covers the years 2018–2021 and includes three focus areas:

A caring company 
Suominen aims to improve the quality of life of its employees and aims at business free of social risks. The company focuses particularly on occupational safety, employee wellbeing and social responsibility in the supply chain. The revised Code of Conduct for Suppliers will be introduced in 2018 and Suominen will audit its implementation for all raw material suppliers by 2021. In the field of occupational safety, Suominen sticks to the target of having zero accidents leading to absence.

Low-impact manufacturing
Suominen wants to produce nonwovens with the smallest possible resource consumption and impact on the environment. In particular, the company focuses on improving its efficiency in the use of both energy and water, reducing its carbon dioxide emissions and increasing the share of renewable energy in its energy consumption. The amount of landfill waste from production is to be decreased to zero by 2021.

The most sustainable nonwovens
Suominen strives to offer the most sustainable nonwovens in the market. Suominen’s product offering already includes some fully biodegradable products. Now Suominen will create a new kind of measurement tool for evaluating and developing the sustainability of its product range as a whole and on product level. With the tool, it is also easy for Suominen’s customers to take sustainability into account just like any other product feature when considering Suominen’s nonwovens for their products.

“The Sustainability Agenda is, together with our changemaker strategy, Suominen’s answer to the prevailing megatrends and the state of our planet, for example climate change, water scarcity and human rights issues. We want to be part of the solution, not the problem. The Sustainability Agenda provides us with us a solid basis to prioritize and conduct the measures we have evaluated to be of greatest importance,” says Nina Kopola, President & CEO of Suominen Corporation.