Yoni believes that every woman has the right to know what her products are made of. They are currently in the middle of a B-corp certification, where every part of the company is being scrutinized and assessed. Everything from the detergent you use to the ratio of the highest to the lowest salary is being looked at for this certification.
I couldn't do business any other way.
At Yoni, the employees are continuously working on sustainability. Mariah Mansvelt Beck: “I couldn’t do business any other way. Sometimes you have to make trade-offs between a fairly sustainable approach and a completely sustainable approach. For example, the wrapper around our tampons is made of plastic. We looked at bioplastic, but when we started, bioplastic didn’t hold the tampon together. I expect that this is possible by now. But because we are a small player, we can’t bear the costs on our own. Then we need multiple products and lobbying with other tampon manufacturers takes a lot of time. For a small team, this trade-off is a matter of making choices.”
Gispen
Rick Veenendaal is Manager Circular Economy at Gispen. His role is to take Gispen with him and coach him towards a circular business model. Rick: “Gispen has been around for 100 years now and what we are strong in in our expressions is our Planet side. Our goal is to stimulate sustainable consumption. Making a profit is a result. The People side also gets a lot of attention within Gispen, but we forget to tell the outside world about that.”
Making policy doesn't work, but giving people space does.
“Over the past 100 years, employees have come up new zealand whatsapp number with all sorts of initiatives themselves, such as the staff fund, where employees and the company put money in a pot. If you don’t get something insured, you can claim it here. In addition, employees can do sports at a reduced rate and there is a company doctor, physiotherapist and coach in-house. There is a large social safety net.”
to do more and more locally. For example, we need more and more skilled workers in Culemborg who do very diverse work. The best example I think is that we had to supply an armrest for an existing office chair for a tender. There was no armrest to be found for that. A colleague from our factory then got to work in his shed during the weekend. On Monday he came to the office with a suitable armrest.”
“With sustainable initiatives, the question is always when it will yield something. It often conflicts with Gispen's profit objective.” Rick has found a handy solution for that: “We regularly tell our story externally. I ask for an amount for that and we put that money in a sustainability fund. We use this fund for sustainable initiatives. In this way, we avoid the official paths and the profit objectives.”