SINK GREEN

Sustainability is an integral part of SCHOCK’s DNA: “No one can opt out of this world,” noted the then Managing Director Friedrich Schock back in 1995. The current management team also share this conviction, and they live it. “We are innovation leaders in the quartz composite market. Shaping the future has always been our speciality,” says Ralf Boberg, SCHOCK’s CEO. The company’s strategic focus, SINK GREEN, accelerates its path towards a sustainable future, because the inventors of quartz composite sinks have set themselves a demanding agenda. “We go our own way – and we stand behind everything we do. This applies just as much to our product world and our marketing themes as it does to our entire corporate philosophy. The path we have chosen is challenging, but we have set ourselves the goal of being a trendsetter when it comes to sustainability in the coloured sink market too, thus setting new standards in the industry,” says Ralf Boberg.

SCHOCK is building SINK GREEN on an existing, stable foundation of resource conservation and responsibility towards the environment. As the only manufacturer of quartz composite sinks to produce exclusively in Germany, the company from the Bavarian Forest sources its natural quartz sand – the main constituent of the sinks – almost exclusively from within the local region of Bavaria. Now SCHOCK is going one step further and putting its processes to the test on all levels, both internally and externally: from the production of the sinks to the careful selection of suppliers to innovative projects with responsibility at the core.

All Days for Future

“With SINK GREEN, we are setting a clear focus, pulling together our combined strengths and helping to shape all our tomorrow’s – not just on Fridays, but every day,” says Ralf Boberg. SCHOCK has already reached some important milestones on the way to becoming a completely sustainable company: water consumption has been halved since 2007, three years later SCHOCK became certified according to EMAS, the most demanding of all environmental management systems in the world, and in 2020 the company implemented an ambitious energy management system that is ISO 50001 certified. Furthermore, the company has optimised its packaging to avoid packaging waste and is encouraging biodiversity across 40 percent of the entire factory grounds. Within the framework of the SINK GREEN sustainability strategy, continuous improvement processes are purposefully initiated on all levels: “In order to drive sustainability on all levels, we have created a separate function for that within the company, on the second management tier,” says Ralf Boberg. “As the next stage, we will completely switch to German green electricity from hydropower in January 2021, for example, and further specific projects on materials technology development and ecological energy efficiency are already in the planning stages.

Quartz sand: A natural raw material for the most sustainable sink

On the product side, in 2021 SCHOCK is launching the CRISTADUR^® Green Line, the most sustainable quartz composite sink and the first to boast a recycling concept for kitchen sinks – thus reaching a new level of sustainability in the footprint of this product. That is because the quartz composite sink, SCHOCK’s core product, has been manufactured in harmony with nature and the environment since the time of its invention: it is verifiably manufactured in a resource-saving process exclusively in Germany. The main constituent is natural quartz sand from Bavaria. And with raw materials efficiency of 90 percent, only a small amount of waste is generated during the production of a sink. The CRISTADUR^® Green Line is now the sink for all those who want an even more sustainable product without having to compromise on design or quality. The models in the CRISTADUR^® Green Line range are made with over 99 percent natural, renewable or recycled raw materials. And at the end of the sink’s lifetime, the product can be returned into SCHOCK’s closed cycle, where it will be reused to produce new sinks without any loss of quality. This option is available in the German market initially. In the medium term, the aim is to convert all sinks to be made with exclusively sustainable, in other words renewable, raw materials.

Lust for green: The “Godfather of Punk” as brand ambassador

The SINK GREEN initiative with the CRISTADUR^® Green Line offers enormous potential for retail: sustainable consumption is already important to 57 percent of consumers today. And the trend is rising. Dealers who include such considerations in selling sinks find a strong supplier in SCHOCK. And when it comes to marketing SINK GREEN, the company is benefitting from some prominent support: Iggy Pop, the “Godfather of Punk” is becoming a SCHOCK ambassador. He will tell the story of SINK GREEN and take consumers on a green journey. He is supported in his mission by the SCHOCK Green Team, a colourful, extravagant troop of endangered species from the Bavarian Forest, SCHOCK’s home region. It is not only his commitment to animal welfare that makes Iggy Pop the ideal ambassador: Iggy Pop also stands for creativity, unconventionality and individuality, values that are inherent to SCHOCK and are reflected in the diversity the company brings to the sink landscape. With SCHOCK, the sink becomes an expression of personality, and that will still be the case with SINK GREEN: “Our COLOUR YOUR LIFE claim remains every bit as important,” promises Sven-Michael Funck, CSO at SCHOCK. “Our green thinking and our green actions are so colourful, so diverse and so full of dynamism that they not only drive us at SCHOCK in our daily work, but they will also inspire consumers. One thing is for sure: green has never been more colourful.

The company’s website at https://www.schock.de/en/company/sinkgreen provides more information on its corporate sustainability strategy.