2020 Sustainability Report

31 Our products are part of people’s working and home lives for many years. That’s what drives us on every day to create functional furniture of outstanding quality in timeless designs. Our Product Development, Production, Sales and Customer Service units are instrumental in ensuring that Girsberger products are developed and produced as sustainably as possible and can be purchased and used for many years. For Girsberger, this product philosophy means acting responsibly in relation to people, society and the environment. We ensure that a long service life, replacement parts warranties, safe designs and the use of low-emission, recyclable materials make purchasing our products an ecologically and economically sound decision. Our production methods are environmentally-friendly and have been climate-neutral since 2015. For every Girsberger product, we check the environmental impact of the materials it will use, right from the design stage. Even though we, too, are increasingly exposed to the pressure to cut manufacturing costs, we consistently manufacture long-lasting products using materials chosen with the environment in mind, and we separate and sort materials as much as possible so that they can subsequently be returned to the recycling loop. There is a continuing need for office workspace to be made more homely and comfort- able, and so there has been a requirement for new products. This is at least partly due to the fact that people’s working and home lives are coming closer together and in some cases merging, not only in an organisational sense but also in terms of furnishing solu- tions. The use of textiles in furniture, and the natural raw material of wood are gaining in popularity for office furniture of all kinds. That gives us an opportunity to use more solid wood, one of the most sustainable of all materials. Not only is working with wood how Girsberger actually began as a company, but we also see it as our mission to keep developing the use of this renewable raw material as one of our core competences in the future. We invest a great deal of time and money in doing everything possible to guarantee that Girsberger products are safe. All our products are subjected to multiple test procedures and plausibility checks, from the design phase through to market launch, and even during development these are based on strength calculations and simulations. This means they are checked for compliance with the product-specific norms required by the PrSG (product safety legislation that applies in the EU and Switzerland), including health and safety requirements. Every product goes through extensive dynamic and static stress testing before the start of series production. All of these standardised tests and plausibility checks are documented and archived. Then the products are independently quality tested by the TÜV/LGA certifi- cation organisation in Nuremberg, with the results verified again every five years. Girsberger Office products are certified, for example with the German GS quality mark, thereby demonstrating that product quality, product safety and the use of non-harmful, low-emission materials are an integral part of the company’s strategy. The proportion of office swivel chairs certified with the GS mark has risen steadily from 96.0 % in 2018, to 99.1 % in 2019 and 99.4 % in 2020, while the proportion tested for harmful substances increased from 95.9 % in 2018 to 99.1 % in 2019 and 99.4 % in 2020. However, by contrast, in the case of our multipurpose/visitor chairs we have seen a reduction in the proportion awarded the GS mark, from 85.1 % in 2018 and 73.9 % in 2019 down to 89.7 % in 2020 while the proportion of those tested for harmful substances fell from 66.0 % in 2018 to 65.5 % in 2019 and 64.4 % in 2020. Product stewardship/environmental compliance Ecology