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SUSTAINABILITY

We have a shared responsibility to protect our planet. Ortolab’s view of sustainable development is based on three main pillars: design, longevity and awareness.

Our philosophy

At Ortolab, we actively strive to help bring about a more sustainable society. We manufacture our technologically advanced insoles from durable materials, which give the products long lifespans. For our production, we constantly endeavour to be at the forefront of material selection, resource efficiency and recycling. We offset the carbon emissions of all our employees and partner with the organization GoClimateNeutral to create internal awareness of climate change issues.

Our ambition is to create extremely shock-absorbant insoles that can be used for as many activities as possible and that strengthen people’s health and well-being in motion.

Our goals

Ortolab participates in efforts to achieve sustainable development. Our focus is on three of the UN’s global climate targets from 2015:

  • We want to contribute to human health and well-being.
  • We want to help promote sustainable consumption and production patterns.
  • We also want to reduce the impact of human activities on the climate.

It is our firm conviction that everyone has the right to a healthy life in a healthy world.

Our sustainability status

Energy. Ortolab uses fossil-free and renewable electricity from hydropower. To heat and cool our production facilities, we use geothermal power.

Materials selection. We always strive to choose the best production materials from an environmental point of view. We are currently implementing an alternative to PU foam. The new material is made from wood, instead of being based on fossil fuels. In this way, residual products from our PU foam can be turned into energy.

Recycling. Ortolab recycles any residual products or spills that occur during production.

Waste separation. We separate and recycle all the waste that our work produces.

Long-term thinking. In our industry, it is unfortunately not possible to be completely fossil-free right now. This is because recyclable footbeds have a very short lifespan – they only last for a couple of weeks. The production of recyclable footbeds would thus require an enormous amount of energy and lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, Ortolab instead opts to invest in products with maximum longevity and durability. We also make sure that our insoles can be moved between different shoes and that they can be used for a wide range of activities.

Minimized footprint. To reduce our carbon footprint to the greatest extent possible, we only buy the products and materials we really need.

Materials economy. Some of our insoles have a base of EVA plates. Thus far, we have reduced the thickness of the plates from 14 to 10 millimeters. As a result, we’ve cut down on our basic materials consumption by a third. We also reduce the volume of our EVA transports, as more material can be delivered at once.