Sustainability and social responsibility
Sustainability and social responsibility are big areas with endless possibilities, challenges, and several definitions. GCE follows the definition of sustainable development from Brundtland commission of United Nations in 1992: “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”. Based on this statement, sustainability comprises the three pillars: Environment, Economic, and Social.
GCE has selected three focus areas for the Social Responsibility policy and sustainability efforts:
- Safety: of our products and in the workplace
- Ethical workplace and business practice
- Usage and recycling of material
GCE products must be safe to operate regardless of the application and thus Safety of products and in production is prioritized focus area for sustainability. All products and processes are analyzed to identify and minimize risks, and employees are trained on how to avoid residual risk both for their own safety and for users or patients.
All employees as well as suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders shall perceive that GCE is trustworthy and a good partner. Thus GCE strives to have and open work environment, free of all sorts of discrimination, bullying and harassment. Child labour and forced or bound labour is not accepted in GCE or by suppliers. Fair business practice is applied which means corruption in all forms as well as taking or receiving bribes in any form is not accepted. GCE respects design and copyrights, as we expect others to respect ours.
GCE designs, produces, and sell products for control gases. In other words, the physical product is the core of what we do and thus ensuring efficient usage of a material is very important to us. Efficient usage of a material is characterized in:
- Reduce: Less material used to mean the less raw material, or recycled material, which needs to be processed and transported
- Reuse: Reuse of material allows material that is already extracted and processed to continue to be used without additional energy usage for reprocessing
- Recycle: Material that cannot be reused shall preferably be recycled to reduce the need for new raw material being extracted or produced
