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Recycle more and use less raw materials

27% of our process waste are recycled in other industries. For example, some are used for shoe manufacturing. Read more

We recycle more and use less raw materials

The use of raw materials constitutes our biggest environmental impact. For example,approximately half of our total greenhouse gas emissions stem from raw materials. That's why we work to continuously reduce the overall usage of raw materials and to avoid raw materials that are particularly harmful to the environment.

The primary method we use to address environmental challenges is the incorporation of ecodesign-principles when developing products. A few examples:

By using a few millimetres lees plastic foil for Self-Cath packaging, we saved enough to wrap the Empire State Building 4 times a year.

By using 50% less aluminium for packing our product, SpeediCath, we have saved the equivalent of 100 beverage cans per year per user.

Produce more with less

Despite production capacity growing, we've reduced total greenhouse gas emissions from energy use 7% since 2010/11. That's the same as 500 times around the world in a car. Read more

We use less energy to produce more

Energy consumption

Energy consumption in production accounts for approximately 30% of our total greenhouse gas emissions. We therefore work to increase energy efficiency in our production.

To encourage more environmentally responsible production, Coloplast allows investments that result in a significant environmental improvement to have a return on investment of up to five years – twice as long as regular investments.

Going further with less

Shipping goods via air transportation emits up to 200 times more greenhouse gases on a given distance compared to shipping goods by sea. Read more

We go further with less

In total, transportation of goods only accounts for approximately 9% of our total greenhouse gas emissions. However, significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be reached simply by substituting air transportation with sea and ground transportation. For example, shipping goods via air transportation emits up to 200 times more greenhouse gases on a given distance compared to shipping goods by sea.

To facilitate this substitution, we've set a target of maximum of 2.3% air transportation

Case in point:

One man's trash is another man's silver

By engaging some of our waste handlers in Denmark we now sell our Biatain AG foam waste, which contains silver, instead of paying for it to be incinerated - contributing to increase waste-recycling by 67%. Read more about how we increased recycling

How we increased recycling

One way to deal with the issue of waste is by reducing waste by increasing efficiency. Another approach is changing how we think about waste – could it be used elsewhere? Would someone else consider the waste from our production a commodity?

Environmental specialists at our production facility in Mørdrup in Denmark began to bring this kind of thinking into our waste management processes. Traditionally, we pay waste handlers to take our waste and then it’s out of our sight. Some is recycled but most is incinerated. However, to break with tradition, we made a tender for handling our waste that had a 50/50 weight on environmental and financial performance - normally, the environmental performance would weigh 5-10%.

As anticipated, this encouraged the waste handling companies to recycle more. If they were able to reuse the waste elsewhere or extract raw materials from it, they could make a more competitive bid. The company that won the contract managed to do just that. For instance, they were able to extract silver from waste generated by our wound care production. This way, the silicone that had previously been considered waste now became a commodity that could be of use somewhere else.

The results of this process were significant. After rethinking waste handling, the production facility at Mørdrup was able to reduce costs per tonnes of waste by 35% in one year. In addition, the total recycling of waste increased by 67% from the financial year 2012/13 to 2014/15.