Environment, people, territory... as a company, we have our part to play.
But when we talk about sustainable development or CSR, what are we really talking about?
For nearly 200 years, our priority has remained the same: to act responsibly in designing our tools, protecting human value and preserving nature. The nature that lives in our soil, but also the human nature of our employees and customers.
Where sustainable development worries about the environmental consequences for future generations, CSR involves the whole company in the approach.
It pushes us to improve not only our environmental performance, but also our social and economic performance.
For Leborgne, CSR is not an objective to be achieved, motivated by a list of actions to be carried out.
CSR is an approach to progress, rooted in our philosophy, which enables us to move forward on a daily basis, and which questions all of our activities, our actions and our innovations.
First act: 2010 and the creation of our Sustainable Development Commission
2010, the date on which the entire Leborgne company committed itself to a CSR approach in order to meet the challenges of sustainability and ensure the long-term future of its centuries-old brand.
This strong commitment began with the creation of an in-house Sustainable Development Commission. Its members, who represent the management of the company's various departments, are trained in Sustainable Development and help to define the company's strategic priorities.
➔ This is how Leborgne began work to obtain ISO14001 certification (environmental management system) in 2012, followed by OSHAS18001 certification (Occupational Health and Safety) in 2014 (since replaced by ISO45001).
Today, our Sustainable Development policy in 3 acts
MAINTAINING OUR ECONOMIC ACTIVITY at our Savoie sites.
Our actions and commitments in this area:
- Local manufacturing: increase production volumes while maintaining our know-how and industrial facilities, enabling us to manufacture in our factories in France and Europe.
- Favour long-life products that can be repaired.
- Reduce waste due to non-quality.
- Create long-term partnerships with our suppliers and customers.
- Incorporate user feedback into the design and improvement of our product offering to better meet our customers' needs.
- Involve in our responsible purchasing approach all Leborgne staff who make purchases.
- Maintain the ISO9001 quality standard.
INTEGRATE THE SOCIAL AND HUMAN DIMENSION into our approach by increasing the involvement of our employees and sharing responsible values with them.
Our actions and commitments in this area:
- Maintain the ISO45001 Occupational Health and Safety standard.
- Comply scrupulously with employment law, while promoting social progress.
- Provide a safe and fulfilling working environment and conditions.
- Encourage our suppliers to adopt a CSR approach and to approve our CSR charter on purchasing.
- Encourage our suppliers to self-assess their CSR approach by a recognised organisation.
- Give priority to local employment via our suppliers and service providers, and encourage the employment of people with disabilities or in the process of social reintegration.
- Develop and promote tools to reduce the arduousness of users through the Nanovib® range.
We have been a member of the Global Compact since 2016
Joining the United Nations Global Compact and publishing our first COP (Communication Of Progress) marks the culmination of the actions and discussions carried out by our Sustainable Development Committee since 2010.
‘We have ambitions and a vision for the future of our company and our brand, and we are determined that these should be achieved in line with the United Nations‘ Sustainable Development objectives’.
Florence Hocq, Managing Director of Leborgne.
CSR at the heart of our design process
Natural gardening, reduction of MSDs in the building industry, safety, health, arduous working conditions... Leborgne has often been a forerunner in subjects that may initially have seemed “secondary”, but over time have become essential and self-evident.
We have always advocated the values of “useful” innovation. By placing our users at the heart of our R&D approach. In order to meet their specific needs, and continuously improve not only the functionality and user-friendliness of our products, but also their health and safety.
In the same way, eco-design is part of this list of development challenges, to design products for the right use, of the best possible quality, with the right materials, while seeking to reduce the number of components or the volume of material needed to package the product.
Our Carbon Footprint
We had our first Bilan Carbone Scope 1 and 2 carried out in 2021, followed by a full Bilan Carbone in 2023, which positioned our greenhouse gas emissions at 3.0kgCO2e per unit of sales.
As part of our drive for continuous improvement, we have already drastically reduced our electricity consumption by 2023 thanks to several joint measures:
- replacing all our 500 light bulbs with LEDs: -60% lighting consumption;
- changing our office heating source: -20% office heating consumption;
- optimization of the industrial process by stop & go: -65% electricity consumption.
Objective -15% within 3 years
At the end of the complete Bilan Carbone in 2023, we have set up a working group to determine and then implement priority actions enabling us to significantly reduce our emissions with a progress plan aimed, through our product offering and our production tool, at:
- reduce the volume of raw materials used ;
- increase the proportion of recycled materials in all our production ;
- reduce the impact of freight and logistics, and in particular reduce the use of packaging materials ;
- extend the lifespan of our products and equipment ;
- reduce our carbon footprint by moving away from gas heating, optimizing the heating of workshops, offices and warehouses, and optimizing the heating times of our process machines ;
- further reduce the proportion of industrial waste (already 92% recycled) ;
- initiate a circular and regional industrial ecology approach.
With our employees
- reduce the impact of travel (home-work, business trips) ;
- encourage car-pooling for home-work trips ;
- encourage employees to carry out their own individual carbon footprint to raise their personal awareness.
A responsible and local sourcing
- 83% of our purchases are covered by suppliers who have signed our Responsible Purchasing Charter ;
- 65% of our suppliers have been signatories for more than 10 years ;
- 95% of our production suppliers are located in the European Union, 70% of them in France, and 47% of them less than 350 km by land from our plant ;
- steels we use to produce our tools is 100% recycled and comes from a European source close to our factory ;
- all the wooden handles we sell come from sustainable forest management and are PEFC or FSC® certified.
A naturally virtuous production process
To operate our forge, we have always used water resources in our cooling process, and in particular water from the Bens stream, which runs close to the forge. This is our natural cooling system: we draw it, filter it and return it to the stream unaltered.
95% of the water we draw returns to the stream unaltered.
Sorting for recycling
- 100% of our solid steel waste is recycled and recovered,
for the rest:
- 95.35% of our production waste excluding solid steel is recovered.
The ECOVADIS recognition, a third-party organization
Since 2007, EcoVadis has been the world's largest provider of CSR assessments, with a network of more than 100,000 assessed companies.
EcoVadis rigorously assesses the extent to which a company's management and working systems embrace CSR principles, based on international CSR standards.
The CSR scorecard then illustrates performance through 21 indicators divided into 4 themes:
- Environmental.
- Social and Human Rights.
- Ethical.
- Responsible purchasing.
In 2020, Leborgne was awarded a Gold medal for its CSR assessment by EcoVadis.
In 2023 and 2024, we are proud to have been awarded the Platinium medal, making Leborgne one of the top 1% of companies assessed in its category!