EcoNatural toilet paper and hand towels achieve Climate Neutrality
Our journey towards sustainability has reached a new milestone: the toilet paper and hand towels in the EcoNatural line, produced in our Diecimo and Laval production plants, have achieved Climate Neutrality.
A fundamental result for helping to mitigate climate change, in other words the phenomenon that is having and will continue to have ever more serious impact on our planet. One example are extreme weather conditions such as heatwaves, flooding and drought, but also rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and the growing loss of biodiversity.
An unsustainable situation, especially in the long term, which calls for immediate measures.
What is Climate Neutrality?
Some of the gases present in the Earth’s atmosphere work a bit like the glass in a greenhouse: they trap the heat of the sun, preventing it from returning to space. This is why they are called greenhouse gases. They are essential to guaranteeing life on Earth, but if their concentration too much for our planet’s natural capacity to absorb and remove them over time, they become the main causes of global warming. Since the Industrial Revolution, all human activity has contributed to increasing the concentration of these greenhouse gases. To reduce the negative impact on the planet and people, the United Nations has set the goal of limiting global warming to just 1.5% more than pre-industrial levels. This means achieving a balance between greenhouse gas emissions, expressed as CO₂eq, which stands for CO2 equivalent, which, put simply, means all greenhouse gas emissions expressed in kg or tonnes of emissions of carbon dioxide and the absorption of the same, in other words Climate Neutrality, on a global level by 2050.
Being Climate Neutral in fact means lending a huge hand to the environment, reaching the point whereby the emissions of CO₂eq released into the atmosphere are balanced by an equivalent compensated amount, in other words removed or avoided, in a certain period of time.
How we achieved Climate Neutrality
This ambitious project saw a succession of three particular steps defined by international standards:
- Measure
The first step is to measure the Carbon Footprint, namely the emissions of CO₂eq recorded during the product’s entire life cycle. At Lucart, we did this with the help of Carbonsink, leaders in the sector and specialists in climate strategy.
- Reduce
The second step is definition and implementation of a reduction in CO₂eq through, for example, the optimisation of production processes, the use of sustainable raw materials, and the shift to alternative energy sources.
In 2022, compared to 2021, we estimated a reduction of 15,781 tonnes of CO₂eq as an effect of optimising production systems and improving their efficiency.
- Compensate
The third and final step is official achievement of Climate Neutrality thanks to the support of projects to compensate those emissions not reduced in the previous step. At Lucart, we decided to compensate residual emissions by supporting the project for distribution and installation of water-cleaning filters in Uganda and Malawi, involving about 537,000 people in 1,380 villages, offsetting an average of 20,375 tonnes of CO₂eq a year since 2021. This project aims to break the cycle of poverty and reduce pressure on the forests, while at the same time improving the health of the local populations and reducing greenhouse gases, avoiding having the burning of biomasses and the release of toxic pollutants into the atmosphere.
These are the three fundamental steps that enabled us to reach this milestone, which we will strive to take to an even higher level, because Climate Neutrality is a journey and not a destination.
A milestone that makes us proud and motivates us to improve and make even bigger efforts to achieve a sustainable future, and one that is just the latest chapter in a story of love and respect for the planet that started 12 years ago with the creation of the EcoNatural line.