Rising climate requirements for industry and construction have led to increased demand for environmental and climate documentation at the product level. This is felt at Sanistål – part of Ahlsell, which sells building materials, technical components, tools, fasteners, and safety equipment to more than 34,000 companies in the industry and construction sector in Denmark.
Making difficult documentation easy to use
It is primarily environmental product declarations, also known as EPDs, that are in demand. With an EPD in hand, one can see, for example, how much CO2 has been emitted during the production of the products – and choose products based on sustainability data.
In practice, however, it is not entirely easy to use an EPD, says sustainability manager Gitte Østergaard Futtrup.
”The documentation is difficult to understand unless you are a sustainability specialist and know how to read and use an EPD. Therefore, we have developed a digital solution that provides our customers with exactly the data they need to easily make responsible product choices,” says Gitte Østergaard Futtrup.
The cart is full of CO2
Specifically, the company's customers can see and compare the CO2 impact of different products when shopping online. When customers click items into the digital shopping cart in the webshop or app, they are shown a figure for CO2 emissions alongside the price – both for the individual item with EPD and, as a new feature, totaled in the cart.
Digesting the documentation for climate data
”Our approach is that it should be just as easy to see the CO2 burden of goods as it is to see the price. Precisely because sustainability is becoming an increasingly significant purchasing parameter for industry and construction, customers need both pieces of information to assess whether it is a good and responsible purchase,” says Gitte Østergaard Futtrup.
Sanistål – part of Ahlsell extracts the climate data from the underlying EPDs, which are also available in the webshop, but customers do not have to sift through the documentation to find the relevant CO2 data.
Seeing effects on plumbing
Currently, Sanistål – part of Ahlsell has CO2 data on approximately 18,000 item numbers. Within installation products in plumbing alone, 35 percent of the item numbers now have EPDs, allowing customers to see the CO2 footprint in the shopping cart.
”We are starting to see indications that linking CO2 data closely to the purchasing decision is effective. We have seen a growth of 5 percentage points in online sales of plumbing products with CO2 data compared to plumbing products without CO2 data. The effect will grow as we obtain data on more products. It's a huge task, but the journey has to start somewhere, and we are well on our way,” says Søren Borg, Director of Digital Business Development.