Wittenburggroup
How can we innovate for you?
Why is sustainability important to us ?
Each one of us has a role to play, and makes a difference towards a sustainable future. Being a family owned business, we take a long term view of the future. We want to hand over a better and cleaner world to the next generation. This makes sustainability one of our key drivers. As manufacturers we are part of a much bigger picture, a chain in which we have a limited amount of influence on the actions of others. This is why we are always ensuring that our suppliers and clients have the same sustainability mentality as we do. There is still much that can be done to help people and planet, feel free to see what we are doing now and wish to do in the future.
- We developed halogen free solutions for our lubricated product portfolio
- We are actively taking action to replace the less human safe polymer compounds by much safer polymer compound solutions.
- We commercialized low carbon foot print high performance engineering plastic compounds combining a recycled and a renewable polymer. A clear proof of upcycling
- We were able to combine the processes for upcycling and lowering our carbon footprint by creating high performance engineering plastic compounds based on recycled polymers for a critical automotive part.
- For our customers active in the medical and consumer market we do develop grades with a circular content up to 95%. Leading to a huge reduction of the carbon foot print.
- To ensure that we create a cycle and continues improvement within our industry, we are helping our customer to recycle their production scrap. This leads to a lower usage of virgin polymers.
- We do invite our suppliers to reduce the carbon foot print of their products, and align with their sustainability strategy
Organizational
Having a family business mentality we want to have concrete and reachable goals for a sustainable future. Through these goals we will be able to hand a cleaner and better world over to the next generation. Because we are only lending this world from the next generation, it is not ours but theirs. Therefore, we actively pursue policies that ensure that the impact of our materials and our production processes on the environment is continuously reduced. As an organization we are implementing systems like Ecovadis ( to be implemented by 2023) and ISCC+ to be able to support our sustainability efforts.
Applies to Wittenburg & Witcom
Applies to Wittenburg
Applies to Wittenburg
Environmental through customers journey
Through our customer journey we are able to closely see how we are reducing our impact on nature. We at the Wittenburg group wish to help our customers transition to more sustainable products. That is why we want to help our customers create innovative solutions that are sustainable for both people and planet. Through this we are able to reduce the environmental impact of our organization and the products that we supply. Not only the reduction in the environmental impact but also a strong business ethics are what can be expected from us as a responsible supplier.
Our ambition is to be a front runner in this transition and to help our customers with solutions which prevent green washing and really contribute to a better world. We do support all our customers with tailored advise on how we can contribute to a reduction of the environmental impact of their business and applications.
The added value for our customers
We help our customers build a sustainable product portfolio by offering customized high-end compounds with ISCC+ certified raw materials from circular resources. We at Wittenburg group provide our customers with regulatory and LCA support to speed up their sustainable innovations and decrease the time it takes to market.
Another way we help our customers is that we design our products in such a way that they reduce:
– GHG emissions throughout the supply chain
– use of natural resources (moving towards 3rd generation renewable feedstock)
– end-of-life waste (design to reduce , reuse and recycle)
How do we support our customers
By ensuring that our products can contain recyclate from post-industrial (PIR) and/or post-consumer waste streams (PCR). PIR includes the waste streams of our own production waste and customers.
Together with our customers we aim to use PIR and PCR in existing products. We design the compounds in such a way that recycle streams are upgraded to become high-end customized products which comply with the regulatory requirements needed for the application in mind.
There are several circular plastic initiatives (concepts) and subsidized projects related to integrated approaches towards recycling and upcycling of PCR and hospital waste streams. At this time these are the activities to which we are actively taking part, this is because we are of the mentality that cooperation throughout the supply chain is key for a successful product introduction and market acceptance.
We support our customers sustainability through our ISCC+ certified compounds that are commercially available and can be used for food contact, oral health care and medical device applications.
The motto of “design to reduce” the reuse and recycle principles are the basis of our compound development and design.
Contributing to waste prevention and/or reduction by developing products with multiple functionalities and improved material properties so the total use of plastics can be reduced is something we believe is very important. We have signed up for Operation Clean Sweep and implemented zero pellet loss measures. Through these actions we help create an example that our customers and suppliers can follow.
We strive to be the strong base that allows our customers to be sustainable, we do this with our products. We are for example:
- Developing compounds which can withstand for example multiple cleaning/sterilization and designed to make it possible to re-use the final product.
- Upcycling plastic waste into high quality materials which can be reprocessed into new or existing products.
Our pillars of strength
We are striving towards a sustainable future, this is done through our three pillars, environment, social and governance responsibilities. We ensure that with all our action, we keep these three in mind. Although most of the public focus is put on environmental, we believe that all of the three pillars should have our focus.
Discover our three pillars of strength.
Environmental
How do we support our customers
The environment and world that we live in influences our quality of life. We, the Wittenburg Group, recognize the impact of our business and therefore take our responsibility towards the environment very seriously.
We take great effort to continuously improve our operations to reduce energy and water consumption and waste generation. We aim that in 2050 our actions to reduce our carbon emissions in line with the 1.5C Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) will have reached net zero emissions. A nice example of our actions is our heat recovery system where we use the residual heat from our production to heat up the offices.
By participating in programs such as Operation Clean Sweep and World Clean Up day we want to prevent & reduce the amount of waste in the environment, and improve awareness amongst our staff.
In our product development we closely work together with our customers and the whole supply chain to develop circular and environmentally friendly solutions. Our view is not focused on the material development alone but also responsible sourcing, process optimizations and design for circularity are all taken into account. Providing compounds with a low GWP and supporting customers with data for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is part of our daily business. With our ISCC+ certified materials we help our partners to make credible and trustworthy claims about responsible sourcing of materials.
Through all of these actions and targets we hope to increase our support for a sustainable future and decrease our Carbon Footprint.
Social responsibility
As a group of family owned companies we put great emphasis on the wellbeing of our employees and the communities around us. We foster a culture of respect and equality, choosing to believe that a diverse team and a good working atmosphere is the foundation for driving innovation and business growth.
We are committed to continuous improvement to protect the health and safety of our employees, while also creating an environment where people can prosper and grow.
With our stakeholders we want to create valuable and sustainable relationships where there is no place for corruption or discrimination. Good business ethics is the foundation of this relationship. Together we build a future for the next generations!
Governance
Within our governance, we believe that aiming to be honest, reliable is important, while sticking to the ethics, laws, and regulations so that it is mutually beneficial. This is all made possible by having good governance and transparency, this is what we live up to!
The Wittenburg group is made up of Wittenburg, Witcom and Xunfeng, a group of family businesses. Our mentality reflects how our ambitions and ideals are inseparable to daily practice. This is characterized by a high level of involvement and placing everything in the perspective of business, environmental and social sustainability. For us accountability and active participation are keywords.
Below you will see some of the toolboxes and policies that are anchored into our management system and help us ensure that everyone can contribute to the strategy and policy making situations. The same toolboxes are available to our board of directors and the board is actively participating to be able to take accountability:
- CSR Policy
- Quality Policy
- Waste Policy
- Conflict of Minerals Policy
- Ethical Decision-Making Model
- Business Excellence
- Control Cycle
- Risk Thinking
- Auditing
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
It is our mission to improve the quality of life by creating innovative materials. This mission is strongly linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Below six SDG’s are most closely related to our business and are incorporated into our strategic plans.
