At VELUX, we like to think of ourselves as more than just a skylight company. We want to make the world a better place by opening it up to more daylight and fresh air. That's why when it comes to our skylight production and overall sustainability, we aim to lead the way in energy-efficient daylighting.
Lifetime Carbon Neutral
VELUX has always been one of the world's biggest proponents of daylight and fresh air. Now, we're taking things up a notch with our Sustainability Strategy 2030 and our commitment to becoming Lifetime Carbon Neutral.
Together with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International, we are capturing our historical CO2 emissions through forest conservation. We've also pledged to reduce our future carbon emissions from our entire value chain, which is in line with the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C reduction target. By 2030, we commit to halving our products' CO2 emissions and making our packaging single material, zero plastic, and 100% recyclable. By 2041, VELUX's 100th birthday, we commit to being Lifetime Carbon Neutral by capturing 100 years of CO2 emissions and reducing our future carbon footprint. By investing in forest conservation projects from 2020-2041 and working to reduce our production carbon footprint, we expect to meet this commitment.
Pioneering Sustainable Products
When it comes to our skylights and the materials used to make them, we believe it matters where they come from and it matters where they end up. That's why, during all the phases of the production process, we focus on minimizing our environmental impact.
Raw Materials
We start with the most environmentally friendly materials, striving to find suppliers who can provide raw materials that comply with our high standards and focus on sustainability. Part of this ongoing process is ensuring that all materials used are produced in a safe and responsible manner, while being resource-efficient and recyclable or reusable at the end of their lifetime. The process also includes:
- Supporting sustainable forestry. Sustainable forest management is part of our effort to protect the environment, ensure biodiversity, tackle climate change, and protect the rights of local communities in forested areas.
- Textile safety, and ensuring the textiles we use in blinds have been tested for harmful substances and are safe from a human-ecological perspective.
- Lead-free products. Due to the unique lacquered aluminum sandwich construction of our standard flashings, lead is not needed, ensuring VELUX flashings are safe and environmentally friendly to install.
- Supplier code of conduct. Our focus on sustainability extends to our suppliers and subcontractors who provide raw materials. They have to comply with our stringent code of conduct agreement and share our commitment to responsible behavior in all aspects of their operations.
Skylight Production
We take responsibility for safe production of skylights. At all our manufacturing sites, we carefully manage the environmental footprint of our activities. A couple examples of how we're doing this include increasing the capacity of new wood-chip bio-boilers and solar panel systems. And currently, 97% of waste materials from production of VELUX skylights are recycled or used for heat generation; but our vision is to achieve zero waste in our production and from our products with a reduce, reuse, and recycle mindset.
Safety and responsibility are also an integrated part of our business activities. All of our manufacturing and warehouse sites are ISO 14001 environmental management certified and ISO 45001 occupational health and safety certified. Our continuous focus and efforts in this area can be seen in our production safety record, which is around five times better than industry average.
Skylight Use
Because so much of our time (90%) is spent inside, indoor air quality is of utmost importance. Because skylights can be such an important factor in ensuring good indoor air quality through natural ventilation, VELUX makes sure our skylights are built to last.
- Durability. Ensuring a long product life is a central part of our sustainability work. VELUX products go through a number of different durability tests before they are put on the market to ensure their high quality and long lifetime. These tests include mechanical tests and aging tests like UV exposure, anti-corrosion, temperature, and humidity exposure.
- Upgradeability. To promote material efficiency and extend the lifetime of VELUX products, we offer a range of interior and exterior accessories. These accessories are available for current products, as well as previous generations, to keep skylights up-to-date with changes in building requirements and user demands.
- Repairability. In addition to the highest quality materials used in our skylights and our extensive testing program, VELUX makes spare parts available at reasonable prices for all windows for many years after purchase. This means that even though the window might be decades old, its lifetime can still be prolonged.
Recycling and Reuse
Because waste handling varies from state to state, and even municipality to municipality, all VELUX products are designed for easy disassembly and are made from easily recyclable materials. In fact, over 92.5% of our wooden roof windows can be recycled.
- Wood or wood/polyurethane window frame. Window frames are suitable for energy recovery through incineration. Experiments are currently taking place to analyze the recycling potential of fibers for use in our new products.
- Aluminum and steel. Recyclable, secondary aluminum and steel are traded commodities with an established recycling infrastructure.
- Glass. Glass is easy to recycle into glass wool, bottles, and other glass containers.
Go Solar for Even More Energy Efficiency
Through Project Lifetime Carbon Neutral and our pioneering of sustainable products, VELUX is doing everything we can on our side to make our skylights as energy-efficient as possible, from production to installation. One way you can do your part to ensure energy-efficient skylights after installation is to Go Solar!
To Go Solar with VELUX, all you have to do is opt for a solar-powered product! That may be our Solar Powered "Fresh Air" Skylight, a fixed or manual skylight with solar-powered blinds, or a Sun Tunnel Skylight with Solar Night Light.
Our most energy-efficient Go Solar option is the Solar Powered "Fresh Air" Skylight with solar-powered blinds and VELUX ACTIVE with NETATMO. The solar skylight is powered by the sun, so there's no need to use any electricity. And the solar-powered blinds provide additional light-filtering and blackout options to help keep your room from getting too hot and needing to run the air conditioner. Lastly, VELUX ACTIVE allows you to automate the entire process of whole-home airing and natural ventilation. Based on your temperature and humidity preferences, VELUX ACTIVE will open or close your skylights and blinds to help create a more naturally energy-efficient environment.
