Sustainability story: An enhanced ecosheet marks next step on our sustainability journey

Since 2018, we’ve been using ecosheets as a transparent way to show our stakeholders how different Dataflex products perform in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA measures the environmental impact of a product at each stage in its life cycle. The LCA results also help us review, manage and ultimately reduce that product’s impact.

Six years on from sharing our first ecosheet, we feel it’s time to take things to the next level.

From linear to circular

We aim to transition from a linear ‘take-make-use-waste’ model to a circular one. So now our goal is to keep materials in circulation as long as possible, partly by maintaining their value as much as possible.

It starts with maximising a product’s durability, as we’ve always done. And encouraging everyone to make use of our Circularity Program, where we repair and refurbish products to give them a second life. Where that isn’t possible, we recycle the product, though this of course means its material value is then considerably lost. As a last resort, we dispose of the product materials responsibly and offset any excess emissions that have occurred during the product’s life cycle.

Transparent about materials

To be even more transparent about our products, our ecosheets now include a materials passport. This provides information on, for example, recycled materials used and emissions associated with each material. This information also helps us improve the reusability and recyclability of that product.

Next steps

To collect and process all the data that goes into our enhanced ecosheets we’ll need to work even more closely with our suppliers and LCA experts, Ecochain. Even then, there will still be a way to go, and we’ll continue to update and improve the ecosheets for each of our products.

Minimizing our environmental impact is an iterative process. It also requires the support and commitment of our clients. But by embracing transparency and circularity, together we really can make a difference. So if you haven’t already, we hope you’ll join us on our journey towards a more sustainable future.