The company’s approach focuses on significantly reducing its CO2 footprint by 2025 and achieving climate neutrality by 2039, leveraging potential on both the company and customer sides.
The Freudenberg business group plans to rely on renewable energy sources to cover around 30% of its energy consumption by 2025. The entire company is also to operate on a climate-neutral basis by 2039.
Freudenberg will leverage several assets to achieve this ambitious goal, distinguishing between “handprint” and “footprint”.
The ecological “footprint” comprises all the resources that Freudenberg uses to produce technologies and offer services. In this regard, the business group aims to reduce its energy and materials use as well as waste, scrap and emissions in a sustained and significant way. The “handprint” refers to the positive effects that Freudenberg products and services can have for customers – for example filtration systems that save energy during operation.
“Our economy is facing perhaps the most fundamental change of the last 250 years. As a technology group, we see it as our responsibility to lead the way and secure a strong market foothold in the long term,” says Dr Matthias Waldenmaier, Global Vice President Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE) at Freudenberg Filtration Technologies.
“With the footprint and handprint, Freudenberg is pursuing a far-reaching approach to sustainability that includes our customers’ processes,” explains Waldenmaier. Accordingly, the filtration specialist is working on solutions that effectively support customers in achieving their long-term sustainability goals.
Freudenberg is also focusing on ecological power generation at its own sites. The site in Shunde, China, for example, has been operating one of Freudenberg’s largest installed photovoltaic systems since October 2022. The system covers 9,500 sq m and is expected to generate over 1.8 million kWh of electricity per year. This way, it not only helps to save more than 1,100 tons of CO2, but also significantly contributes to Freudenberg’s sustainability goals.
In the coming years, the Freudenberg Group aims to achieve the European standard for sustainability reporting, install another photovoltaic system in Slovakia, and get a “silver” rating from the sustainability rating agency EcoVadis, among other things.
