Gabriel_175th Anniversary_Web_Spreads - Flipbook - Page 62
THE GUARDIANS
The calm
transparency
That commercial realism meets another discipline: how to speak
about sustainability without stretching the truth. The team say outright that you cannot simply claim a product is sustainable. There is
always an impact. Instead, they stay close to documentation, and
work in tight dialogue with marketing, the sales force and customers
about what can be said, how, and with what proof. They describe the
narrow path between greenwashing and greenhushing - and the organisational integrity required to walk it.
Transparency, for them, is both approach and method: acting with
integrity, sharing knowledge across partners and internally, while still
protecting what needs to be protected for the business to function.
They point to schemes like EU Ecolabel and OEKO-TEX as frameworks
that create a form of transparency.
But the deeper transparency lives in responsiveness. Customers know
they can bring an environment-related question and get a fulfilling
answer. If someone arrives with a new standard or request from a
market, they investigate it and return with a considered response.
They also note the longer tradition behind the current work. In the
1980s Gabriel stopped using heavy metals in dyes. In the 1990s ISO
certifications and labelling became part of pushing the industry
forward - building requirements and documenting better chemical
profiles in a chemical-heavy production reality. The same goes for
supplier requirements: Gabriel does not trade with just anyone. Expectations are used to influence the value chain in both directions while refusing to settle for minimum requirements when it is possible
to be more proactive.
The Guardians’ story is calm because it is built on repetition. Each day
is another decision made visible, another question asked one step
earlier in the chain, another improvement that has to be proven rather than announced. They keep zooming out, and then back in - until
responsibility becomes what it should be: a way of working that does
not need a trend to exist.
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