Goal: Reducing Waste

Worthless waste or valuable secondary raw materials? “Waste” is a key environmental problem. For one, limited resources are depleted. For another, some wastes pose a serious threat to wildlife, for example, plastic bags or synthetic micro particles that end up in the oceans. And last but not least, improperly disposed waste can introduce dangerous substances into the environment. 

Waste management has a high degree of environmental relevance at our headquarters in Tettnang-Obereisenbach. All waste is collected by local waste management companies and properly disposed of, or it is brought to a collection station by VAUDE employees with documented proof.

Residual waste is our "problem child": at VAUDE this consists primarily of production waste from bag manufacturing that cannot currently be recycled. For one thing, these amounts are quite low on an industrial scale. In addition, coated synthetics are not a single material and therefore present a real challenge for recycling. VAUDE has had waste potential analysis carried out by experts in order to significantly reduce waste and to ensure the most environmentally friendly form of waste disposal possible. The results of this are being gradually implemented. A percentage of material waste (polyethylene and polyamide) from products at the Tettnang-Obereisenbach site is collected separately and given to a recycling company.

In addition, at our Tettnang site several tons of waste were created between 2013 to 2015 due to the remodeling of the office building during the construction phase.

Despite careful separation for recycling, residual waste increased due to the remodeling measures. On the one hand, this was due to the intense remodeling work of the office building still taking place in 2015. Secondly, after a lightning strike, the production building at VAUDE burned in April 2015. Not only did we have to dispose of many damaged materials, furniture and equipment also had to removed. In the course of the refurbishment, an additional site with a good deal of accumulated waste was created.