Building a sustainable business

Vikan is committed to providing the most extensive range of effective, hygienic, and sustainable cleaning tools and solutions on the market. As an industry pioneer for 125 years now, our innovative products have moved the industry forward. In recent years, we’ve been using that focus and pioneering spirit to increase our sustainability efforts in our locations across the globe.

“Social and environmental responsibility has always been at the heart of what we do,” Managing Director Carsten Bo Pedersen explains. “Being mainly owned by a charitable organisation, caring for people, our local communities, and the environment is embedded in our business values and culture.”
 

Our Products

Becoming more ‘green’ in an industry that requires virgin, non-recycled plastic is not a simple task. Due to extremely strict EU and FDA regulations, which require that materials used in contact with food and food contact surfaces must be food contact compliant, virgin plastic is the most suitable material for the manufacture of food industry cleaning and food handling tools. However, that does not mean that Vikan isn’t rising to the challenge of increasing our environmental efforts.

We are continuously seeking opportunities to replace the use of virgin plastic to create more sustainable products where appropriate. Our Transport Line, for example, has blocks made of recycled plastic and wood. We also use regenerated plastics where we can. This regenerated plastic comes from ends, cut-offs and shavings that have been harvested during the manufacturing process with full traceability from our own products.
 

Our Culture

Being mainly owned by a charitable organisation, caring for people, our local communities, and the environment are embedded in our business values and culture.

We know that sustainability starts at home, which is why we have been increasing our eco-friendly efforts in our own facilities. Some of our initiatives include using LED lights with sensor control in the Danish and US facilities, optimising container packing, using an innovative system that creates the smallest package possible for product transportation, increasing the fill percentage for containers going to our UK and US sites and implementing Virtual Site Surveys so our staff won’t have to travel to help customers.
 

Our Future

To ensure Vikan remains focused on implementing and utilising more sustainable initiatives, we have created a ‘Sustainability Roadmap’, to ensure that we follow a structured path towards the implementation of green initiatives. The Roadmap includes prioritised initiatives that are supported by performance indicators and a professional reporting structure. This helps us prioritise initiatives based on importance, impact, and feasibility. 

 
Being mainly owned by a charitable organisation, caring for people, our local communities, and the environment are embedded in our business values and culture.

We have also identified long-term goals we would like to meet by 2030, which will serve as a guideline to our green efforts:

• CO2-neutral electricity and gas consumption
• 50% reduction of airfreight CO2 emission
• All plastic products made in recycled or renewable materials
• Full supplier compliance towards Vikan’s Supplier Code of Conduct and sustainability criteria

Vikan will continue to work to improve sustainability at various levels at the organisation, and we will communicate regularly about these initiatives. Please follow our upcoming blog posts to get more detailed insight into the work Vikan is doing to create a healthier and greener future.