Finnish design and production guarantee a transparent and socially responsible supply chain and thus the best possible quality. This also creates jobs in Finland; in addition to our own employees, we employ a number of other design, production, and installation professionals.
We are constantly aware of the emissions caused by our production, and we keep track of our direct and indirect carbon footprint. We compensate our annual carbon footprint by planting carbon sinks in Finland that bind around 230 tonnes of CO2 emissions. At the same time, we provide our clients with solutions that reduce energy consumption and waste. Our appliances have a long lifespan and low energy consumption. Their recycling rate is high, and we encourage our clients to either recycle themselves or to return the equipment to us for recycling. Our recycling is done by a reliable and transparent local partner.
EWQ participates in Taimiteko, a project by Finland’s 4-H organisation, that employs young people and aims to plant trees to create a new carbon sink. By planting new forests in the bogs abandoned by Vapo around Finland, we neutralise our carbon footprint every year. We currently plant more than twice the amount of new seedlings that cover our own direct annual CO2 emissions. It is important to us to ensure that our indirect carbon footprint is also neutralised.
The trees we plant absorb around 230 tonnes of CO2, covering more than our annual carbon footprint.
We employ young people living in sparsely populated areas to help them find employment and enable networking with companies.
We provide our customers with solutions that reduce their environmental impact, either directly or indirectly. Our services and products reduce our customers’ paper and energy consumption, reduce waste, and improve inventory management and the workload associated with e-commerce collection, resulting in a substantial reduction in our customers’ carbon footprint while reducing costs. Our EWQ Zone service allows you to use your equipment fleet up to the end of its life cycle. The service can be used as the fleet is upgraded and vice versa; when we introduce new or upgraded technology, it is always applicable to the existing fleet.
We have developed a Climate Roadmap, which defines our environmental and climate-related activities and targets for 2020-2030. We started calculating the CO2 emissions of our operations in 2020 and at the same time offsetting our direct and indirect carbon footprint. In 2023, we moved to a more comprehensive GHG Protocol emissions calculation, which has enabled us to better identify our major sources of emissions. Between 2025 and 2029, we will calculate our product-specific carbon footprint and carbon handprint. Our goal is to be carbon negative by 2030, meaning that our operations sequester more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit.
Our goal is to measure the GHG emissions of our products throughout their life cycle (Cradle-to-gate and Cradle-to-grave) by 2029. The calculation is on-going.
By 2029, we will calculate the positive climate impacts of ourservices. Calculating our carbon handprint is an essential part of our carbon neutrality goal.
In all our activities, our customers always come first. Our solutions ensure a relaxing, queue-free service and make keeping price information up to date as easy as possible, increasing the trust of end customers as shelf prices always match prices at checkout. We always treat our clients equally, and communication is our top priority. Our ticketing system ensures that each client receives an answer within the agreed response time, which we monitor on a monthly basis.
High corporate responsibility is always a sign of a good work environment. As a socially responsible employer, we have succeeded in engaging our employees, which is reflected in the low turnover of our staff. This has increased the company’s internal expertise and created a trustful community. We ensure the well-being of our employees with various concrete activities, such as trainings and recreational days, and invest in the comfort of the work environment. Each of our employees has accepted and acts in accordance with the EWQ Code of Conduct.
Social responsibility is the most important criterion for the selection of our subcontractors. We always ascertain our subcontractors’ corporate responsibility and require companies to agree to our EWQ Supplier Code of Conduct before any collaboration. We want to continue to operate at a high domestic level, which is why we favour domestic partners. If we cannot select a domestic partner, we always carry out a risk assessment and require that the factory in the country of origin be audited.
Due to the nature of our business, we process a large amount of data on a daily basis. We do not take any risks; our processing of data is always reliable, and its protection is ensured with world-class methods. Our employees are committed to complying with data protection principles. Our use of data is also transparent, and data is managed only by professionals. On sunny days, the electricity used by the server modules of our data centre supplier in Finland is generated almost entirely by solar panels installed in the data centre, in addition to renewable electricity backed by guarantees of origin. The data centres are highly energy efficient and have a minimal PUE.
Social responsibility is an endless improvement process. It is the driving force behind everything we do and cannot be acquired ready-made. We are constantly working on improving responsibility with concrete acts, such as:
Membership of the FIBS network (Finnish Business & Society) and development of corporate responsibility together with more than three hundred strongly invested companies.
We are among the first companies to participate in the Planet Company project, the aim of which is to highlight concrete acts of responsibility.
EcoVadis, a company providing sustainability assessments, has awarded our business a Gold level rating of social responsibility, which indicates that we are on the right track and that we have focused on the right areas by making our company more socially responsible. Only 5% of more than 100,000 companies assessed receive the Gold rating.
What is EcoVadis?
EcoVadis is the largest sustainable development and social responsibility ratings provider. EcoVadis assesses corporate sustainability in four areas: environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. EcoVadis has already rated over 100,000 companies in 160 countries over 200 industries. It aims to highlight companies, especially those that EcoVadis deems to have the potential to become model students of sustainable development.
Höyläämötie 11 A, 4th floor
FI-00380 Helsinki
David Bagares gata 7
SE-111 38 Stockholm
Sisjö Kullegata 8
SE-42132 Gothenburg
Höyläämötie 11 A, 4th floor
FI-00380 Helsinki
Bryggargatan 8b
SE-111 21 Stockholm
