Ecology and economy
Resource-saving, pollutant-free & energy-efficient production
Responsibility has a tradition with us
As a long-standing family business, we naturally take responsibility for our employees, our fellow human beings and the environment. This includes ensuring that our quality products are produced under good working conditions and that the important foundations of life are preserved for future generations. That is why we already pay attention to an environmentally friendly process during the production of our SAVUTEC® vulcanised fibre.
Sustainable resources
Our vulcanised fibre products consist of the renewable raw materials cotton linters and cellulose, whereby we use cotton linters fibres that are unsuitable for textile production. In this way, we put a supposed waste product to a sensible and sustainable use. The pulps come from sustainably managed FSC-certified forest stands. The FSC certificate ensures that the corresponding forests are used in an environmentally friendly, socially acceptable and economically viable manner.
Ecologically harmless parchment
We parchment special paper webs in one or more layers on top of each other using sulphuric acid. We use as little sulphuric acid as possible and rely on an environmentally friendly recycling process. Before the final drying of the vulcanised fibre webs, the acid is completely washed out of the material. The process produces diluted sulphuric acid, which we process via vacuum distillation in order to reuse it. The water used in this cycle contains only a low concentration of sulphuric acid. Before it is fed back into the Wupper, which flows right next to our production building, we neutralise the acid content by adding milk of lime. In this way, we ensure that no acid residues get into the environment - neither through our products nor through our waste water.
Green electricity for a clean environmental balance sheet
Paper production is one of the most energy-intensive industries. When selecting our suppliers, we make sure that they use an energy-efficient production process. We ourselves cover our annual requirements with green electricity from the Wuppertaler Stadtwerke (WSW). This is generated CO²-free, mostly in modern hydroelectric power plants in Norway or Sweden. The relief for the ecosystem amounts to 660,690 kilogrammes of CO² per year, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide that a German beech forest with 52,877 trees can remove from the earth's atmosphere each year. In addition, we are working with the Effizienz-Agentur NRW to further reduce our energy consumption.