Hilti goes greener
6 May 2022
Hilti is well-known for the bright red boxes that its tools come in, but the colour green is also featuring strongly in the company's worldwide operations.
According to the group’s recently published 2021 sustainability report, the global business has achieved reductions in energy use of some 2 billion watts, or two gigawatts, as part of its strategy aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2023.
The blog has already highlighted the importance that the power tool manufacturer is placing on meeting its ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) obligations here.
On the road to net zero, organisations will need to look carefully at individual aspects of its operation and consider how carbon reductions can be made.
Hilti's latest report details the worldwide efforts made last year towards reducing energy use in the company’s production plants, as well as in offices and in its retail stores.
Hilti states that a key achievement was the move to the use of 100% green electricity across all global operations, either by purchase or the use of propriety photovoltaic systems. The expansion of the group’s re-usage programme also saw the number of refurbished spare parts in repair rise from 10,000 to 100,000 in two years, and a move to LED lighting across as many sites as possible contributed another 300,000kWh in savings per year.
At the group's Schaan headquarters, in Liechtenstein, cooling water from manufacturing machines is pumped into the thermal network which contributes to the heating of the entire Hilti campus. This saves some two million kWh of gas each year, a reduction equivalent to 400 tonnes of CO2.
Global changes to car and van fleets have also helped Hilti to reduce its overall emissions. In 2021, 3,000 electric vehicles (pictured) were ordered, which equates to over 20% of the global fleet. By the end of last year, more than 40 market regions were either assessing their car and vehicle fleet or were already in the process of a switch from petrol and diesel to electric options.
At Hilti’s plant in Kaufering, Germany, switching to recycled paper for instruction manuals reduced paper usage by 215 tonnes in 2021, equivalent to 10,000 trees.
Hilti also continues to focus on reducing its Scope 3 emissions – those arising from an organisation’s supply chain but outside its direct control. One initiative is to increasingly shift transportation to warehouses from road to rail, which can reduce emissions by approximately 90 per cent.
As well as internally tracking progress against the goal of carbon neutrality, Hilti looks for external validation from accredited bodies to demonstrate its carbon successes. In 2021 the organisation says it improved its externally assessed sustainability rating from Silver to Gold, and that it now ranks among the top five per cent of all 85,000 companies evaluated by the EcoVadis ratings agency worldwide.
Those are some of the actions that Hilti is taking on its path to net zero. How is YOUR organisation reducing its carbon footprint? Do let me know.
