First carbon capture forest project underway 
One of the major highlights of 2021 was the start-up of the first carbon capture forest project in Uganda with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). This is part of our commitment to capture the Group’s historical carbon emissions from our operations (scope one and two). The Uganda project aims to capture around one million tonnes of CO₂ by restoring and conserving forests in the Albertine Rift in Uganda, a biodiversity hotspot. This is the first of five forest projects that combined will capture the VELUX Group’s historical CO₂. All projects are developed and run by WWF. 

100% renewable electricity supply by 2023 
As part of our aim to become carbon neutral, we are working on a global decarbonisation programme with carbon neutral action plans for each of our factory sites. In 2021, we partnered with Schneider Electric to speed up the switch to 100% renewable energy for electricity by 2023 through a renewable Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) contract. This is contributing to our 2030 target of a 100% reduction in the carbon footprint of our own operations. 

Green our packaging 
During 2021, we worked on transitioning to single material, 100% recyclable packaging with zero plastic. To do this, we developed a new packaging material made solely of paper and cardboard to replace the previous material that was a mix of plastic, paper and cardboard. This new material provides the required protection for products and makes it easier for customers to dispose of the packaging in one waste category. It is already being used for main residential windows in Europe and selected products in the US. 

We achieved limited assurance for our 2021 sustainability reporting and are working towards achieving the auditing level of reasonable assurance in the next few years. 

See our Sustainability Report 2021 highlights.

Read the full Sustainability Report 2021. 

Globally, 300 million tonnes of plastic waste is produced every year, and researchers estimate that 60% of the plastic produced since 1950 has ended up in landfills or the natural environment². Plastics developed to have a single-use are proven to have a negative impact on biodiversity and the natural environment if they end up in the wrong places³. Instead of plastic, the new window packaging will consist of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified cardboard. 

With expanded polystyrene (EPS) plastic components removed, VELUX customers will save time on separating and sorting packaging waste, making disposal processes both more efficient and cheaper. 

This transformation has led to a 13% reduction of the carbon footprint of the VELUX Group’s packaging for sloped roof windows and is key to delivering on its overall sustainability strategy target to make its packaging single material, zero plastic and 100 percent recyclable by 2030.  It also marks the first step in an extensive sustainable transformation of how the VELUX Group does business and what products and solutions it brings to the market. 

Notes

¹You will experience zero plastic in the packaging of the following roof window types: GGL, GGU, GPL, GPU*, GZL, GLL, GLU. Both manual and electric variants.

*For GPU, only the manual variants are part of this first phase of the project. 

² United Nations Environment Programme: UNEP

³ New Study Shows Plastic in Oceans Is on the Rise (nationalgeographic.com) and Single-Use Plastics 101 (2020), NRDC. [online] 09 April. Available at: NRDC [Accessed 25 Feb. 2021].