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The concept of Ecodesign entails developing a product or service that is both appealing to customers and environmentally friendly while considering its entire life cycle and implementing circular strategies. That's precisely what we at Körber are striving for.
Providing sustainable products, solutions, and services to our customers is part of our sustainability strategy. It supports our customers in improving the environmental impact of their production. Ecodesign offers excellent opportunities.
We emphasize a personalized approach for customers aiming for green production. Achieving emission transparency is crucial for optimizing future production sites. Therefore, we are currently working on how to make emissions digitally measurable and analyzable at various levels, from the machine right up to the planning and control systems of a production site.
lEcodesign is not just about minimizing the carbon footprint; it's about reimagining how we design, create, and operate machinery for a sustainable future.r
Erich Hoch, COO/CTO, Körber Group
This will take time to happen, of course. Implementing the Ecodesign concept means more than just minimizing the carbon footprint; it's about reimagining how we design, create, and operate machinery for a sustainable future.
At Körber, we started working on this topic when we founded the Ecodesign think tank back in 2021 to develop Ecodesign guidelines and coordinate the Ecodesign community. In April 2023, we additionally established the Ecodesign Center of Excellence (CoE), aimed at collaborating with design stakeholders to craft tailored standards, capitalizing on synergies throughout all Körber Business Areas.
This is a constant work in progress. So far, the most important principles are:
We are also conducting pilots for individualized Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) based on ISO standards and have established the first group wide LCA standard that guides setting up and executing an LCA for all Körber machinery.
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service throughout its entire life cycle. It considers raw material extraction, production, use, and disposal factors. LCAs help identify areas for improvement in sustainability and inform decision-making processes.
A genuinely sustainable production site must drastically reduce its emissions in three distinct scopes as defined by the GHG protocol. Essentially, Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions that are owned or controlled by a company. Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy, and Scope 3 refers to all indirect emissions from the value chain, covering activities such as transportation, production, and disposal of purchased goods and services. This requires maximum transparency about the exact emissions figures along the value chain including suppliers as well as customers.
To combat climate change effectively – the most pressing sustainability issue of our time – Körber has embraced a net-zero commitment, aligning with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) guidelines and with a primary focus on emissions reduction. Just recently, the SBTi approved our net-zero targets.
Being a technology group, we at Körber are heavily involved in machine building. Therefore, we focus on Scopes 3.1 and 3.11 due to significant hotspots in purchased goods and services, and use of sold products.
Ecodesign can play a significant role in making products more energy efficient – and it does so already. Solutions to gather substantial energy savings in machinery and production facilities can be achieved by:
Erich Hoch, COO/CTO at Körber Group, points out the three principal ways to improve the energy efficiency of our customers' production facilities.
Energy recovery systems as well as storage systems play a critical role in reducing machine energy consumption by efficiently storing and reusing energy through various methods, such as energy accumulators, heat exchangers, and storage solutions, such as batteries or thermal storage. These systems allow brake energy to be used for other machine operations, effectively reducing overall energy consumption.
Machines in production lines often operate independently within fixed boundaries, limiting overall efficiency. Treating the entire production site as an interconnected entity opens up new ways to optimize sites holistically.
There is no technical solution with no energy losses. That's why our engineers try to minimize those losses through various means, such as specifying requirements, avoiding over-engineering, maintaining consistent throughput, and closely aligning machine configurations with customer needs. Another option is to pick the most energy efficient way to design a function of a machine.
At Körber, we address the challenge of sustainability and energy standards by developing upgrade kits for individual modules within production lines. This approach allows for swift, iterative improvements and holds enormous potential for reducing emissions.
Reducing pollutants during production is as essential as during the product's lifespan. However, Ecodesign is an elastic and evolving concept. It should be seen as a design approach rather than a label. And one thing's for sure: Without Ecodesign, we will never be able to contribute to achieving the critical 1.5-degree global target. Join us in the transition to a more sustainable, energy-efficient future.
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