Sustainability is becoming central to how we do business and our goal is for Guardsman Safety Solutions to be a responsible and resilient organisation that inspires and implements solutions that protect the environment while being commercially successful for our stakeholders.
At Guardsman Safety Solutions, we have been working hard to develop the Product Award. Built with our customers in mind, the Award is intended as a visual indicator of a product's sustainability to support sustainable decision-making and open up discussions around sustainability in the safety industry.
We have defined a comprehensive set of criteria across our product categories to assess the sustainability of our products against one another objectively. This criteria falls into four categories:
- Producer to focus on supplier wellbeing, charitable and environmental initiatives.
- Production to account for the manufacture and sourcing of the products
- Product to assess chemicals or materials used within the product and any dosing
- Packaging to consider materials used to package the products and end-of-life
The criteria is aligned with current best practices, legal requirements and horizon topics. We will be regularly reviewing the scoring and criteria to maintain the validity and relevance of the Award with an annual review of the answers provided by our manufacturers. After scoring, each category is awarded Bronze, Silver or Gold or left unawarded and each product receives an overall award.
We use this scoring to show customers the sustainability performance of the products they choose and align alternatives with their priorities, whether it's about plastics, non-toxic chemicals or recyclability. Going forward, we will be able to use this information to engage with manufacturers on how they can improve the sustainability of their products as well as support our customers in finding an appropriate sustainable solution. The Product Award is intended as a reliable source of product expertise that improves access to sustainable choices and drives positive change through our supply chain.