The products on grontkontor.dk are selected based on the following basic criteria for product sustainability:
Resource
Miljøbelastning
CO2 load
Social responsibility
To ensure these criteria are met, there are a large number of certificates and standards that you can read more about here on the site in a short time.
1. Consumption of resources
a. Global:
Of course, a product must be based on materials and sustainability that either
is based on unlimited resources (eg brick, iron) or
is based on recyclable resources (eg cork, bioplastic) or
is the recycling of already produced materials (eg recycled plastic, steel)
b. Local:
Although a resource is unlimited globally, it is important that local resources and needs are also taken into account (eg freshwater resources, food production vs. maize production for bioplastic)
2. Environmental impact
a. Mining extraction:
Raw material extraction should be carried out with low pollution and environmental impact, both in the near and remote environment. An example of the opposite is products with high fossil consumption, and products based on irresponsible mining.
b. Production:
Low pollution and environmental impact are, of course, no less important in production, where especially the disposal of consumed chemicals in air, soil and watercourses can be a heavy burden on the near and far environments. (eg color and lacquer industry, oil industry)
c. Disposal:
In assessing sustainability, it is important to consider a product’s overall life cycle:
Can the product be recycled to a reasonable degree?
will the disposal of the product contaminate air, soil or groundwater?
is the product compostable or reasonably biodegradable?
3. CO2 load
It is a crucial factor in a product’s sustainability properties that it is not CO2 positive, ie. in production or use, the CO2 charges the contents of the atmosphere and thus contributes to the warming of the globe. On the contrary, on the contrary, it should of course contribute to a reduction of atmospheric CO2 content.
Great sinners here are, for example. non-recycled fossil plastic products such as PVC and ABS as opposed to bioplastic and recycled plastic.
Ift. The load factor is the product’s life expectancy, as any carbonaceous product acts as carbon deposition throughout its lifetime.
4. Social responsibility
An equally important sustainability parameter is the social factor. We will not consider an organic cotton T-shirt as sustainable if it is produced by underpaid labor in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. A sustainable product should also socially contribute to a world in balance, ie. is produced with social responsibility of adult people under decent production conditions to a fair wage, and taking into account the other inhabitants of the planet.