iLOQ’s commitment to carbon-neutral waste management
An international comparison, undertaken by the UN and the Bertelsmann Foundation, assesses the ability of countries to implement the 2030 agenda and goals for sustainable development. Finland, who had already been ranked in the top three in earlier years, reached the top spot in 2021.
iLOQ’s headquarters in Finland is setting the benchmark for the entire company’s holistic approach to sustainability and is actively encouraging all employees – from production line workers right up to top management – and all suppliers to become personally engaged.
Our latest initiative is to centralize our waste management activities. We have set goals to improve our recycling methods, reduce the workload by streamlining our actions and find more effective ways to get the latest information on changing requirements, for example, legislation and reporting. To help us fulfill these goals, we have chosen to partner with a major player in Finland and a pioneer in sustainability and carbon-neutral waste management: Lassila & Tikanoja (L&T).
For years, L&T has been actively working towards reducing emissions from its transport operations by improving route efficiency and driving habits and switching to lower-emission transport vehicles and fuels. In addition, L&T’s recycling plants use green electricity. These measures will continue and be further improved, but they do not eliminate all emissions from waste management. The carbon-neutral waste management service was created to fill the gap.
Carbon-neutral waste management means measuring the carbon footprint of a company’s waste management and offsetting the measured emissions. Offsetting is done by sequestering an equivalent amount of carbon from the atmosphere through certified afforestation projects. The service reduces the company’s own carbon footprint and benefits the climate.
L&T uses Gold-Standard-certified afforestation projects that contribute not only to carbon sequestration but also to other sustainable development goals. Supporting local employment and strengthening biodiversity, L&T currently has a project to plant trees in Ethiopia as an offset.
We will have access to the Oma L&T customer portal. From here, we will be able to track and manage our waste management anywhere, anytime, see the weekly and monthly calendars for waste management at our sites and keep track of future and past orders. The portal also supports our own reporting requirements.
We will also be using Ympäristönetti – a service that allows us to monitor our waste management data and environmental impact on a more detailed level.
By centralizing our waste management activities under one partner, we aim to increase the transparency of our actions and develop better waste management techniques. All lessons learned and activities that are successfully implemented in Finland will then be rolled out locally in all iLOQ’s country sites. And rest assured, we will continue to choose suppliers that share the commitment to waste management and overall sustainability as we do.
