Protection of the environment
Our natural resources, e.g. clean air, raw materials or fossil energy sources, are depletable. For commonly used raw materials and energy sources, the end of the supplies is already in sight.

Every industrial company should be aware of this fact. The Schmersal Group has set itself the goal to respect and observe the principles of sustained economic growth and to consider both the economical objectives and the ecological and social aspects of equivalent importance.

Product development
The adequate conditions to produce sustainable, eco-efficient products are created in the design process. When developing new products, our engineers make sure that the "ecological footprint" of the new product is as low as possible. Our product development therefore aims at minimising the environmental burden during the fabrication, the utilisation and the valorisation or the end-of life elimination of the products.

This also includes an intelligent use of the available resources and the selection of energy-efficient production procedures. An important aspect of sustainability is the longevity and durability of the products: switchgear, which lasts longer, consumes fewer resources!

As the energy consumption is regarded, our safety switchgear and safety-monitoring modules only consume minimum volumes of electrical energy. We also focus on the improvement of the energy-efficiency and the minimisation of the power, water and heat consumption in our five production plants.

We consider the protection of the environment as "work in progress": we regularly draw up energy balances for the entire company, in order to identify and exploit the savings potential.

Production
Since 2006, all our products are compliant with the European Directive 2002/95/EC on the restriction of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (RoHS). All soldering processes have been converted in 2006 so that only lead-free soldering products are used. And we started using completely new surface treatment processes, e.g. the thick-film passivation even before the prohibition to use chrome 6-containing coatings came into force.

Solvents are only used in the absence of environmental-friendly alternatives. For instance, we use water-borne coatings - this conversion process is almost finalised. The collaborators of our production plants are permanently sensitised as the in-house environmental protection is regarded. After all, the collaborators are in the best position to formulate suggestions for the improvement of the production cycles and processes, which they daily execute.

Recycling
Waste matter and recyclable materials are collected separately and reused if possible. Paper is collected separately from the domestic waste as well. As registered member of the Resy system, we use recyclable packaging material.

Premises and mobility
The cladding of our administrative building at Wuppertal was gradually equipped with a modern heat insulation system over the past years. In order to save heating costs, the production in wintertime starts one hour later than in summer. Our production and administrative spaces are exclusively lit by means of energy-saving lamps.

The company vehicles are also selected under observation of the energy consumption and the aspect of sustainable mobility: since 2006, the majority of the company fleet consists of economical diesel-powered vehicles. Our mini vans run on natural gas.