Kohler Has Expanded Its ‘Declare Labels’ On Health & Environment


11/02/2018

The kitchen as well as the bath ranges of Kohler will now present more detailed disclosure for its customers.


Dailycsr.com – 02 November 2018 – On the occasion of “World Environmental Day” 2018, Kohler Co. announced that it would be expanding its “environmental and human health product disclosures” in its bath and kitchen product range.
 
Moreover, the company has also come out with its “first Declare human health product labels” in its “Villager® bathtub and the Brockway™ sink”, which are two popular label names of Kohler. The above mentioned “Declare labels” are like the labels used to disclose food ingredients which detail “the material composition of the fixtures” whereby helping the consumers by informing them about the safety of the respective product.
 
The “International Living Future Institute”, in short the ILFI, has developed a format for creating the “Declare labels” for fulfilling “product disclosure requirements in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED” rating system of green building. In order to realise the project, the operational and engineering crew at Kohler collaborated for over six months, while Kohler’s “product sustainability engineering” Principal Engineer, Jeff Zeman:
“Developing our first Declare labels required gathering details on the sourced raw material from each supplier, the quantity of naturally occurring impurities, and the final material composition after undergoing chemical transformation during the casting and firing process. Architects and designers have asked for information about the products they specify for building projects, and knowing the exact makeup of the raw materials help us continue to invest in product innovation that benefits our customers.”
 
Recently, Kohler also increased the scope of its “environmental product declarations”, in short EPDs, for its “plumbing fixtures” range that is manufactured for “North American and select Asian markets”. The expanded EPDs prove helpful for the “architects and interior designers” for maximising the credits as they target to abide by LEED certification while building.
 
In fact, Kohler has also received “third-party certification through UL” for creating “on-demand EPDs” for over thousand “primary kitchen and bath fixtures” or over “10,000 total product SKUs” during colour and “finish variations” accounting. Following the said expansion, Kohler has achieved the place of the company which offers “more EPDs than any other building products manufacturer”. In the words of the Sustainability Director of Sustainability at Kohler, Rob Zimmerman:
“Kohler has long been known as an industry leader in water efficiency. Providing clear, easy-to-understand environmental and human health data on the products we manufacture takes our sustainability commitment one step further. In partnership with the green building industry, we strive to ensure that all residential and commercial buildings contribute to the overall health of their occupants while minimizing their environmental footprint.”
 
The operational leaders and environmental engineers at Kohler worked together for gather data “energy, water and waste” from fourteen different manufacturing sites of the company and then applied the same to “individual products”. Unlike other manufacturers, Kohler didn’t follow the typical approach of “product-by-product” certification; instead the company “achieved UL certification at the facility level”.
 
As a result, the “number of KOHLER and Sterling products” available with EPD are maximised while the data proves insightful for the development teams providing “an edge in designing the next generation” environment friendly plumbing products. Furthermore, there are plans that for 2019, Kohler’s teams with collect data for developing “EPDs for KOHLER faucets and showering products”.
 
References:
http://ethicalperformance.com/