This is how we reduce our environmental impact

We use more sustainable materials in our products.

Materials constitute a considerable proportion of our total emissions, with cotton causing over half of them. We replace ordinary cotton with more sustainable materials, such as organic and Fair Trade cotton, recycled materials and linen. For instance, the carbon dioxide emissions of linen are only about a third compared with cotton.

We no longer use plastic bags at our outlets and the online store.

We think that the world needs sustainable solutions instead of disposable ones. In our stores, we said goodbye to plastic bags and replaced them with paper bags and reusable bags, both subject to a charge. In addition to reducing the amount of plastic used, we also want to make our customers consider whether they need a bag at all and encourage them to use reusable bags.

Products purchased online are packaged in postal packages made of easily recyclable board.

We removed plastic from our product packages.

We used the same plastic packaging for our bedding textiles for years. We wanted to question this traditional way of packaging sheets and asked whether plastic really is a necessity for packaging textile products.

A new, plastic-free package is the next important step in our sustainability work. In autumn 2019, we updated the packaging of bedding textiles. The new package is made of recyclable corrugated and regular board. The new package saves plastic up to 20,000 kg a year, which means approximately one million plastic bags.

Next we will transform the packaging of curtains and then tablecloths. We aim to stop or at least minimise the use of plastic packaging.

We use renewable energy.

All of our operations in Finland use EKOenergy-labelled wind power, including our headquarters in Salmisaari, Helsinki, and all of our retail stores from Helsinki in the south to Lapland in the north. The EKOenergy certificate is the only international ecolabel for electricity. The label is an initiative of a group of 37 environmental organisations, with the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation playing a key role.

There are differences between renewable forms of energy. The EKOenergy label guarantees that the electricity we buy is not only renewable but also meets the strict sustainability criteria approved by environmental organisations. The electricity we purchase is wind power from Finland and Denmark. Our electricity supplier is Nordic Green Energy.

We signed the Finnish water stewardship commitment.

Water is important for Finlayson’s business, as the making of our products requires a lot of water – from cotton growing to the manufacture of the final product. We want to take care of our environment. Therefore, we signed the Finnish water stewardship commitment in March 2018.

The Finnish water stewardship commitment, established by Aalto University, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry of the Environment, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and WWF Finland, is part of the social commitment to sustainable development in Finland.

We have undertaken to identify the impacts of our business on different areas, minimise the impact of our actions on water and develop sustainable water use and management in co-operation with our stakeholders.

Well done, but there is still room for improvement.

We will not remain sitting on our laurels now; instead, we will raise the bar even higher. After reaching one target, we will set the next one. We are currently working on our new emission targets, which we will publish in 2020.