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Being sustainable has obvious environmental connotations, and Altro has very strong commitments to this with sustainable flooring products that can be reused or repurposed. However, it’s not just environmental practices that we try to maintain but rather sustainability in all aspects of the way we go about business and impact the world around us.
Whilst our sustainability goals go well beyond just environmental concerns, let’s start with the obvious and state what we’re doing to ensure we touch the Earth gently. We are doing our best to keep our business and the planet happy and healthy for many years.
Product development is where we can create and improve our products, ensuring they are gentle on our environment and utilising materials that reduce waste. Not only do Altro produce several types of sustainable flooring but, in fact, 97% of our floor products sold in 2021 contained bio-based and/or reused or recycled content.
With all our construction safety floors containing bioplasticiser, a material made from corn, each has a bio-based element to their construction. Because we use a bioplasticiser, we don’t use ortho-phthalate in our flooring, saving on the production of potentially harmful chemicals. Furthermore, we don’t use lead, cadmium, mercury, or hexavalent chromium in our safety floors or walls.
We’re aware that by minimising wastage in the creation and installation of our products, we can make a massive difference to the harmful output that almost all businesses have to deal with. However, when wastage does happen, we can tackle this with recycling initiatives, of which Altro has been a pioneer in championing floor and wall recycling schemes.
We ensure that our Altro walls are 100% recyclable so that they can be reused or repurposed to extend their lifecycle and be continued, and all of our PVC based products are also 100% recyclable pre-installation. Our safety flooring is also wrapped using 100% recyclable materials so that we reduce our environmental impact even in packaging and delivery.
With any global business, a carbon footprint will be a concern, so we’ve taken it upon ourselves to try and reduce ours in significant ways. Our constant adjustments to how we create our products have seen a whopping 99% reduction in our manufacturing water consumption since 2000.
We also take great pain to divert waste from ending up in the landfill and, as such, have saved 109.10 tons of carbon by doing so. Part of how we achieve this is thanks to Recofloor, a sustainable collection service founded by Altro and Polyflor, that has resulted in the collection of 6,000 tons of waste vinyl flooring, thus saving 7,038 tons of CO2.
Whilst the word sustainability instantly generates imagery of environmentalism and greener living, we also want to create a sustainable workplace for our staff, somewhere where they feel they can build a career and grow, as well as creating sustainable opportunities for communities across the globe.
In 2021, Altro had 40 employees with over 25 years of service with us, and all of our employees can spend a day per year providing voluntary support to charities. Altro also offers charitable support as an organisation, and in 2020 we championed the Starfish Greathearts foundation, which helps orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa, to support the Wellness Wagon Mobile Clinic they have in place.
We also have our charitable foundation, The Altro Foundation, of which 2% of our global profits go to. The foundation’s goal is to improve the quality of life for the more vulnerable communities worldwide with innovative spaces that improve their healthcare experience.
A family business for over 100 years, Altro has always had a mission to build better futures. Learn more here.
