Gabriel_175th Anniversary_Web_Spreads - Flipbook - Page 59
THE GUARDIANS
Importance of the
uncomfortable questions
They speak about responsibility in a practical grammar. Pernille describes the work as evaluating the environmental impacts of products,
tracing those impacts back to activities and processes, and deciding
what to change in order to improve the environmental footprint. Much
of that ends up in an EPD - an environmental product declaration where a product’s footprint is documented in a standardised format,
based on life-cycle assessment data.
For the team, the value is the discipline. It forces the uncomfortable
questions early and turns “we should” into “here is what moves the
needle.”
Clarity also means ownership. They work to ensure sustainability does
not sit centrally in one department. It must travel into everyday decisions, across functions, and into conversations with customers and
suppliers.
Questions are never isolated. A material choice becomes a process
question. A process question becomes a supplier question. A supplier
question becomes a customer promise.
That is why dialogue keeps returning as their most important instrument. They describe customer conversations that increasingly operate at a high level: what happens in supply chains, how Gabriel’s textiles become part of other companies’ products, and how demands
travel through the system.
It is complex. Louise mentions research that found 221 different definitions of “circular economy.” No wonder you sometimes need to pause
and make sure you are talking about the same thing before you move.
Then they zoom back in, to the daily discipline: material inputs, origin,
energy and water, chemicals - all the things that are added.
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