When the market is saturated with "sustainable" products, the companies that choose to make a real difference will stand out. Here, we hear from Global Technical and Sustainability Manager, Aidan Hill on how companies like Autex, global leaders in the development and manufacture of acoustics and insulation products, are leading the charge on sustainability, and setting themselves apart in a crowded market.
Autex recently announced that they were the first company in the interior acoustics industry to have reduced and balanced all carbon emissions from business operations, including manufacturing, and acoustic products to zero. This was just the latest achievement in Autex’s sustainability journey, which began 50 years ago when the company was founded. “Since its inception, there has always been a focus on how we do things, how we produce things with lower impact, that’s always been there,” says Aidan.
For over half a century, Autex has been designing, creating, and manufacturing cutting-edge acoustics for the built environment. The business has a long history with sustainability; in 2010, it was one of the early adopters of life cycle assessments, and it continues to uphold its commitment to offering product and services that support WELL Building, LEED, Green Star, and BREEAM certifications. In recent years, the question for Autex was how to embed sustainability further across their entire business and the broader construction industry.
“First step was to establish a sustainability strategy and that provided a more structured approach,” explains Aidan. “We did an assessment, we went out to market, identified our stakeholders both external and internal, and asked, ‘What are our big impacts?’”
This began a process that enabled Autex to better understand what their carbon footprint looked like. It was a massive undertaking that required the company to look at their business through an entirely new lens. Instead of just reporting dollars and cents, measures like kilowatt hours, litres of fuel, and electricity meter points became the new measures of success.
“Our executive got together and said, all right, so what action can we take on this? What leadership can we provide to industry?” says Aidan. “Off the back of that meeting, we decided to commit to carbon neutrality for our business as well as our product range. We wanted to take the decision out of the hands of our customers and specifiers, and make it an easy decision for them. So rather than them having to tell us, we just said, ‘Right, you can be assured that every product that you use from Autex has no carbon emissions associated with it.’”
Adopting a ‘circular’ mindset also became an integral part to Autex’s operating model, and for good reason. “We need to look at our current construction model and it's no secret … We take raw materials, we make products from them, we then use them to build, ultimately demolish and dispose of them as waste, and that process is linear, and that is the crux of the issue,” says Aidan. “It’s in my mind, one of the greatest challenges facing the construction sector today because it requires a fundamental rethink of how we construct, and we simply must become circular so we stop waste from being produced in the first place.”
Autex is blazing a trail in this space too, developing new processes to take back waste trimmings and recycle them into the next generation of product. “That's where manufacturers need to lead the charge in terms of, you know, how do we establish these processes,” adds Aidan. “The challenge for the construction sector is that they're not off the shelf. There's no real network or connection. They're beginning to emerge. We're starting to see a lot of support out there for manufacturers who have a willingness, who want to partner with other businesses to create a more circular economy.”
Find out more about Autex’s sustainability journey by listening to the full Talking Architecture & Design podcast episode.
