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 organization, 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, virgin plastic is the most suitable material for hygienic cleaning in the food and beverage industry. 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

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 DK and US facilities, optimizing container packaging with an innovative system that creates the smallest footprint possible, 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 we stay focused on implementing more sustainable initiatives at Vikan, we have laid out several key areas we would like to improve in over the next few years in the roadmap below:

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 organization, 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.