Vandersanden, Europe's largest brick-producing family business, plans to reduce its ecological impact by 15 percent by 2023 and aims to be fully carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve this goal, the family business is making its packaging more sustainable, using recycled material and less ink. In this way, Vandersanden is taking an important step towards circular packaging.

In 2022, Vandersanden will only use plastic sleeves and shrink-wrap that consists of at least 30 per cent recycled material. By the end of that year, a large proportion of the packaging will contain 50 per cent recycled material. This is one of the initiatives the family business is embarking on, to reduce its carbon footprint by 15 per cent by 2023, compared to the benchmark in 2019 and to be completely carbon neutral by 2050.

"By using covers and sleeves that consist of 30 per cent recycled materials, 400,000 kg less CO2 is emitted annually," explains Raf Jansen, Chief Operations Officer at Vandersanden. "That is equivalent to planting 17,000 trees. In time, we want to increase that share to 50 per cent recycled materials, which in environmental terms is the equivalent of 58 hectares of forest or 29,000 trees. These figures clearly show that the environmental benefits of recycling are enormous."

Investing in generations

In addition to increasing the use of recycled materials, Vandersanden is also ensuring that less ink is used for printing on its packaging. The brick manufacturer will introduce eco-printing at all its production sites during 2022, which means that only a maximum of 10 percent of the packaging surface will be printed. This has several advantages for the environment. The smaller print area requires up to 80 percent less ink, and eco-printed sleeves are also easier to recycle into high-quality material.

"By printing on a maximum of 10 percent of the packaging surface, we save on ink and our packaging becomes easier to recycle. This is an important step towards circular packaging and a contribution to our long-term goal of being completely CO2 neutral by 2050. I am proud of the efforts of all our employees and partners to make our production processes increasingly sustainable. As a family business, we think in terms of generations, not years," adds Raf Jansen.

Innovation through repeated testing

In order to guarantee the quality of the new sustainable packaging, Vandersanden conducted several tests during its development in the past year. This is to ensure the strength of the recycled material packaging is guaranteed. These tests were so positive that further tests are currently underway to make the shrink wrap thinner as well, in order to use even less material.

Vandersanden is taking action at all levels of its organisation to minimise its environmental impact and achieve the goal of CO2 neutrality by 2050. For instance, Vandersanden is currently examining how it can deal with pallets in a sustainable way and is taking steps to work with return pallets. Another recent example of sustainability initiatives undertaken by Vandersanden, is the introduction of the most energy-efficient brick kiln in Europe at Tolkamer. The family business also published its first sustainability report in 2021, the Collective Wellbeing 2020 report, with a full overview of all its sustainability initiatives and objectives.

Visit the Vandersanden website to find out more.