CLIMATE ACTION, a key objective of AKO Group’s sustainable development engineering

4 March. AKO Group joins the initiative to help promote commitment to today’s communities and the environment, as part of the first year of the UNESCO World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, and to underline the ways that engineering coupled with technology have helped to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals.

The AKO Group is specifically focusing its knowledge of more than 40 years and its resources (40% of its staff are engineers) to fulfil goal no. 13 “Climate Action”.

It has created processes such as “Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)” applied to the design of its products, through which it pinpoints improvement opportunities to reduce environmental impact and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Optimising the end of life of AKO products, a sustainable measure.

We have used the ISO14001 environmental standard, which has been integrated into the company since March 2006, as a starting point.

This standard is used to determine the environmental aspects and impact of products associated with their life cycle, from the moment they are designed to the moment they cease to function; in the design projects of all the products manufactured by the AKO Group, its engineering area proposes various strategies and measures in the different phases of the product life cycle.

Extending their useful life, improving their functionality during the time they are used, and recycling their ingredients so that they are converted into as little waste as possible—these are essential principles which the AKO Group considers in the entire design and manufacturing process of its equipment.

It is important to set an objective and a scope to precisely analyse the life cycle of a product, defining a series of phases, each of which has a properly identified environmental impact, and for this purpose a number of different strategies are applied to reduce it as much as possible.

A tactical example would be the optimisation of the useful life of the AKODATA IoT device, allowing it to be correctly managed when it ceases to be used: through the easy disassembly of its materials (ingredients) to be recycled and reused as energy, thus not mixing different materials of plastic origin. From the packaging standpoint, other measures would be reducing the volume of the container, the packaging type, and creating a digital version of the accompanying technical documentation.

In short, delivering on over 50 questions associated with the improvement measures that can be adopted to reduce the environmental impact of this or any other AKO Group product.

The AKO Group works continuously to further develop solutions that preserve the environment and help the qualitative development of our communities. It does so by promoting processes with the aim of carrying out adequate waste management and optimising energy consumption.