GROHE reaches milestone in combatting global plastic waste

By Canadian Interiors On May 31, 2022

GROHE, part of LIXIL, a global manufacturer of water and housing products, reached a milestone in its efforts to tackle the global waste problem and its impact on water by improving its services.

Pictured above, is the Pacific Garbage Screening Project created by Marcela Hansch. Pacific Garbage Screening (PGS), supported by GROHE, is designed to tackle cleaning up oceans, re-purpose the waste, and educate the public about sustainability. With an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and marine biologists, Hansch, a trained architect, is developing a waterborne platform that will collect plastic waste before it pollutes the ocean’s ecosystems. Using cutting edge technology, the plastic will then be processed in the most sustainable way possible.

According to the company, this initiative is in line with LIXIL’s Plastic Action Statement, a commitment that serves as the basis for all business processes, products and services to reduce plastics across the world.

“With water at the core of our business, it is our responsibility to care for every drop of this precious resource and commit to paving a pathway for clean water worldwide. GROHE’s Less Plastic Initiative will bring us a step closer to this goal,” said Trey Northrup, Leader, LIXIL Americas. “As a purpose-driven business, we are wholly dedicated to reducing the use of plastic within our own footprint and encouraging our customers to live more sustainably. Our belief is that it’s critical to give our planet the utmost care and attention now and into the future.”

GROHE has invested in block heat and power plants in two of their German production plants, in Hemer and Lahr. For the plant in Klaeng in Thailand (photo above), GROHE was awarded a silver certificate by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB). After the expansion of the factory building in 2017, it´s now the most sustainable production plant of its kind in Southeast Asia

Known for its sleek German design and engineering technology, GROHE states that it will “greatly contribute to tackling the global plastic waste problem” with its three-step Less Plastic Initiative:

Removal of Plastic from Packaging – To date, GROHE has removed and replaced all unnecessary plastic from product packaging. This has resulted in savings of around 37 million items of product packaging made of plastic. To do this, GROHE has increasingly used molded pulp inserts – which consumers may know from egg cartons – instead of expanding polystyrene or wrapping film solution. They are made of recycled paper and can be recycled again and again. Though GROHE achieved this major milestone this spring, the brand will continue to work on innovative packaging solutions and make its packaging even more sustainable.
Development of GROHE Blue Water System – The GROHE Blue Chilled & Sparkling 2.0 water system provides chilled, filtered and, if desired, carbonated water straight from the kitchen tap – with a perfect taste. Thanks to this intelligent functionality, this resource-saving solution not only reduces the ecological footprint, but also enables consumers to live more sustainably.
GROHE supports becoming Carbon Neutral –– In addition to its global plastic waste initiatives, becoming carbon-neutral has been a long-term goal for the GROHE brand and parent company, LIXIL, which began in 2007 by assessing its carbon footprint. As a result, since 2020 all eight LIXIL fittings plants as well as the German logistics centers of the GROHE brand are CO2-neutral*. In 2021, the GROHE outbound logistics became CO2-neutral*, and to offset unavoidable CO2 emissions in the future, GROHE has pledged to support compensation projects.

For more information, visit: https://www.grohe.ca/sustainability/our-projects