WEPA Group Publishes Sustainability Goals

The vision of the WEPA Group is to be the most sustainable and agile first class partner for personal and professional hygiene solutions. In order to achieve this, the company has set itself clear sustainability goals in the areas of raw materials, production, packaging and innovation, as summarised in the WEPA Group Sustainability Report.

The WEPA Group has been using recycled fibres for more than 30 years as the most sustainable raw material for manufacturing hygiene papers. Today these already consist of 40 percent of fibres used, making WEPA the European market leader in terms of the environmental footprint of the utilisation of raw materials. The share of recycled fibres and other virgin fibre alternatives is to be increased to 60 percent by 2030. Among other things, this helps to reduce the environmental footprint of fibre raw materials by 25 percent.

In April, the WEPA Group committed to the Science Based Targets initiative in order to contribute to limiting global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The submitted science-based CO2 reduction target is currently in the evaluation phase at SBTi. The implementation will take place in two areas: firstly, in internal company processes, and secondly, in the selection of and cooperation with suppliers and service providers.

25 percent of goods currently sold by WEPA are recycled, and 24 percent are hybrid products. However, the WEPA Group does not only produce sustainable hygiene papers – these also need to be sustainably packaged. Already today, 100 percent of WEPA packaging is recyclable and can thus be reused. In addition, the share of recycled material used for packaging is to be increased to 60 percent by 2025. This enables WEPA to save 8,000 tonnes of primary plastic each year.

A further goal is to expand the WEPA product portfolio with new, sustainable hygiene solutions – among other measures through an in-house innovation unit as well as cooperation and partnerships with a special focus on sustainability along the value creation chain of the company.

“Especially in recent years, we have felt how rapidly the importance of sustainability is growing in society in general and also among our customers and consumers. Sustainability is one of the core values of the WEPA Group and we have already achieved significant accomplishments in this area. However, we have set ourselves ambitious goals to fulfil our vision of becoming the number one in sustainability in our industry. We will be reporting in a highly transparent way about our progress," explains Dr Stefan Gräter, head of sustainability at WEPA.

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