sustainability is the new premium.
in april 2022, united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) released a new report with the latest scientific knowledge on climate change, its impacts, risks, and recommended actions. once again, but more urgent than ever before, scientists of the panel outlined the severity of hazardous and irreversible impacts climate change would have on billions of people’s lives, as well as on the healthiness of our whole planet, which is fundamental for food, clean water, air, and virtually everything our lives are based on. to reduce the severity of those impacts, immediate action and prompt deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are essential (ipcc, 2022). according to the ipcc report, industry is amongst the three largest contributing sectors which enrich the atmosphere with co2 (achuta et al., 2021).
consequently, industry also offers big potentials for environmental improvement. greenwashing and compensating emissions while continuing to pollute the air won’t make real changes. it takes deep cuts in emissions and other hazardous substances to save the world for our children.
more than a decade ago, we at ruwido have already seen the urgent necessity for improvement and have since then followed our strong ambition to contribute to the goals towards a liveable future.
“craftsmanship for a better world” is the direction we follow, having the whole production in austria, powered by 100% renewable energy for already more than 10 years.
as a designer and manufacturer of premium quality remote controls, we have recognised through a scientific study, that a shift of values is ongoing (bernhaupt et al., 2022).
we are convinced, that what has been premium once, is not premium anymore.
soft lacquers and illuminated keypads used to be part of premium products. however, lacquers and lighting electronics contain hazardous substances for our environment* (us epa, 2019). the illumination itself consumes precious energy. as a company following the mission to act responsibly for our environment, we strongly believe that those lacquered and luminous elements cannot be part of modern premium products anymore. our conviction is that, within the shift of values, sustainability is the new premium.
to be able to contribute to the protection of our planet while creating modern premium products, we at ruwido have put all our endeavours into making our remote controls as sustainable as possible. as a company, we have the goal to take responsibility and make real changes, and not just a nice marketing story.
years of effort and millions of euros on research and development have resulted into an outstanding new clean product architecture.
it stands for products without chemistry and a tremendously reduced number of components, called “the better world architecture”.
the success of our efforts can not only be proven through several renowned awards and two valid patents for our new clean architecture. a scientific lca analysis of the product showed that the production of a remote control based on the “better world architecture” generates two thirds less co2 compared to a traditional remote control (lettner, 2022).
but what are the secrets to achieve such outstanding results? read more about our “better world architecture” in our following article.
* Examples for such harmful substances in lacquers would be volatile organic compounds (so called “VOCs”) that have negative effects on human health and can contaminate ground water (US EPA, 2019). More information about those hazardous chemicals will be given in the article “CO2 isn’t everything”.
Achuta, K., Adhikary, B., Allan, R., Armour, K., Bala, G., Barimalala, R., Berger, S., Canadell, J., Cassou, C., Cherchi, A., Collins, W., Collins, W., Connors, S., Corti, S., Cruz, F., Dentener, F., Dereczynski, C., Di Luca, A., Diongue, A., … Zickfeld, K. (2021). Technical Summary: IPCC AR6 WGI. www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf
Bernhaupt, R., Berger M., Pottier, G. (2022) Global News or Romantic Movies: How Customer Values Are Key for the Entertainment Experience, submitted to IBC Conference 2022.
IPCC (Ed.). (2022). IPCC Press release: Climate change: a threat to human wellbeing and health of the planet. www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/resources/press/press-release/
Lettner, M. (2022). REPORT: Screening Life Cycle Assessment and environmental hot spot analysis for remote control.
US EPA (Ed.). (2019). What are volatile organic compounds (VOCs)? www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-are-volatile-organic-compounds-vocs
