We are proud to announce that CTOUCH has won the Sustainability Award at the Inavation Awards 2021, powered by Inavate and ISE. The Award was given to recognise CTOUCH’ commitment and contribution to a more sustainable & circular world.
“We are very excited to win the Sustainability Award and are delighted to receive recognition for our sustainability work,” says Remmelt van der Woude, CEO at CTOUCH.
“Sustainability is one of the four themes of the CTOUCH Circle and has a high priority on our agenda. This goes way beyond the recycling of product packaging as we believe sustainability is much more than recycling. Our sustainability mission covers each life-cycle phase of our products and company: from raw material acquisition to factory processes, and from the use-phase to the end-of-life phase. This way, we take responsibility for all of our environmental and sustainability impacts.”
What is CTOUCH’ sustainability mission about?
Global warming is a fact and there’s no time to waste. So, CTOUCH is on a mission to be the most sustainable touchscreen manufacturer in Europe. We go the extra eco mile by lowering our CO2 footprint by 60% and increasing our circularity by 25% in 2025. We’re happy to lead the way in putting logic in ecological.
“This award is a great motivation in achieving our mission
to be the most sustainable touchscreen manufacturer in Europe”,
says Remmelt van der Woude, CEO at CTOUCH.
How are we going to achieve this?
In order to take concrete steps, we defined 4 areas of sustainability which will serve as the primary categories in achieving our sustainability mission. We will improve our environmental footprint via these 4 areas in a way that will maximize value to CTOUCH, our employees, customers and society.
1. Production phase I Our production, packaging and transportation process
The production of touchscreens requires energy and materials. Both of these resources have an impact on the environment. At CTOUCH, we strive to use materials that have the least amount of environmental impact. We also strive to minimise the energy required in the production process, while simultaneously increasing our share of renewable energy in our energy mix.
In addition, we focus on reducing the CO2 impact of packaging materials and CO2 emissions of transportation, from our factory to CTOUCH, and from CTOUCH to our customers.
2. Use phase I The way in which our customers use our products
The environmental impacts during the use phase of our touchscreens are directly related to their energy consumption. Within the use phase, we therefore focus on innovative concepts for reducing energy consumption, while simultaneously creating awareness for CO2 impacts.
Furthermore, our aim is to reduce the average CO2 footprint per display per year. Recycling, modular building and giving products a second life are all part of our efforts to give our products the long lives they deserve.
3. End-of-life phase I The end-of-life and circularity of our products
At a product’s end-of-life, valuable materials often end up being disregarded and dumped in landfills. We believe this is unacceptable. At CTOUCH we work hard to find ways to prevent any unnecessary waste. Sustainability doesn’t end when one of our product’s lives has reached its end. Therefore, next to circularity in the production phase, we also aim to increase the circularity of our product’s end-of-life phase
4. CSR I The environmental and social impact of CTOUCH as an organization
To lead the way and to set an example, we take responsibility for our own CO2-impacts and strive to reduce them as much as possible. In addition, we contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by engaging and taking an active role in the community around us. This will help us and the rest of the world in working towards a circular and fair economy. We give priority to those SDG’s in which we can maximise our impact and are of greater importance to our company and our stakeholders. These SDG’s are: education quality (4), sustainable cities and communities (11), responsible production and consumption (12) and partnerships (17).
Some green initiatives
The sustainability drive from CTOUCH brings with it a raft of new innovations that enhance the working and learning environments, futureproofing them at the same time. We highlight three key initiatives that we have taken to date to work as a responsible company towards a more sustainable and circular future.
#1 CTOUCH Sustainability Passport
One of the key initiatives is the development of the CTOUCH Sustainability Passport. For each of our touchscreens, we conducted a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to quantify the CO2-impact of the entire life cycle. The outcome forms the basis of the Sustainability passport. Every CTOUCH touchscreen comes with its own Sustainability passport.
#2 Offering modular and upgradable solutions like BRIX
CTOUCH BRIX is a complete line-up of scalable collaboration solutions for the modern workplace. The concept is based on a modular business model that uses the touchscreen as a platform, which can be upgraded via modules. Each BRIX module brings an interactive collaboration experience, depending on the end user’s needs. Customers will be able to upgrade or migrate to different collaboration solutions within their meeting room or classroom. This can be done without having to replace the entire touchscreen, which saves a lot of money and reduces CO2-emission. Yes, we’re talking about a real win-win situation here.
#3 Second Life & Repurposing programme
We give companies and schools a refund for their used screens, regardless of whether they buy new CTOUCH screens. This allows CTOUCH to take true ownership of its products. We refurbish our screens that reach their first end-of-life. Then we upgrade them so that we can repurpose them in new industries at a reduced price. This gives our products the longest average lifetime in the AV world. Just as important, we’re avoiding unnecessary use of new materials in the production phase. And we prevent waste of raw materials that are still in perfect shape. True circularity!
This is just the tip of the iceberg – stay tuned!
There are many other sustainable initiatives that we are working on, such as:
- Our CTOUCH Heartbeat programme in which we offer end-users the possibility to add flexible services to our products in the area of security, AV/IT manageability, feature upgrades, training and sustainability.
- Various initiatives are in progress to improve the supply chain around packaging and transportation.
- Our goal is to obtain the ISO 14001 certification and to implement an environmental management system in 2021.
- CTOUCH has entered into a partnership with MVO Nederland and has become Network Industry Leader for sustainability.
We will tell you more about these initiatives very soon, so stay tuned! Keep an eye on our website, follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter.