Is embracing transparency and sharing ups and downs as a company helpful for the green transition?

The world faces a common climate challenge; we need a united effort and collective solutions to overcome it.

In Målbar, we see a tendency in our customer base to open up, increase transparency, and work together on some of the environmental challenges we face. And this is something we like to encourage, facilitate, and support a lot. Because we believe that we need to work together to solve today’s many environmental issues.

New screening tool for circular furniture

An example of a favorable cooperation is a project initiated by us that involves three of our customers. These three furniture brands all work with the concepts of take-back systems and refurbishment. Our initiative consists of designing a specialized screening tool that can calculate climate impacts on circular products. A tool, that will enable these companies and the industry in general to measure the impact of refurbished furniture and compare it with conventional furniture. Such a tool will ensure that different circular models can be compared because they are based on the same way of measuring.

The involved companies share their business schemes, experiences, and methods with each other and Målbar. Thereby, they inspire one another and cooperate though they are very different in size and capacity. Moreover, they provide us with firsthand empirical knowledge that we can use to build the tool.

This collaboration is an example of a win-win-win situation that even has the potential to benefit many more than those involved.

• Win: Collaboration allows for the development of a solution that encompasses different business models
• Win: It allows for the inclusion of different perspectives and ideas since the companies are very different from each other
• Win: It creates progress in the knowledge of new business models providing quality information for decision making.

Shared knowledge is worth more than secrets

We urge all companies to lay aside the secrecy and instead open up about their sustainability strategies. We urge you to share what you find difficult – maybe a competitor can give you useful advice. And to talk about what really works for you – maybe others will take your advice. It is solely a good thing when you can inspire competitors to go in a greener direction and vice versa. If your initiative made you reduce your footprint, it might help others to reduce their footprint. And we all need to lower our collective CO2eq footprint.