We contribute with our actions: from minimizing footprint to maximizing handprint
While sustainable goals take off in the packaging world, we, at Walki, pledge for moving beyond simply minimizing environmental footprint to also consider the positive handprint of the material you are wrapping your products in.
Taking the path less traveled
As the demands for sustainability grow, companies across sectors typically choose one of the two alternative paths. Path One means that companies focus on improving their existing processes to minimize some of the harms their businesses are linked to. We call this as Minimizing the Footprint. Path Two, then, means that companies leverage their core business to create profitable solutions to the problems of the people and the planet. We call this as Maximizing the Handprint.
Simply put:
Path One: Footprint recognizes the bad stuff. It can and should be reduced to zero.
Path Two: Handprint captures the good stuff. It can grow, at least in theory, infinitely.
While Path One still encapsulates much of today’s business sustainability, we, at Walki, strongly believe in taking the path less traveled. And we would like to bring you and your business along. Naturally, we continue to reduce our own footprint, but at the same time we can help you reduce yours, which then becomes our handprint. And when you help your customers to reduce their footprint, it then becomes your handprint. Following this path further, your handprint can grow even bigger than your footprint.
Which one you think will be the winning strategy for businesses in the next 5 years?
Being part of the solution
“If I had thrown a trash in the park every day and one day woke up to the fact that there is too many trashes in the park, the problem cannot be solved by only throwing trash in the park every second day.” (Antero Vartia, the founder of Compensate)
This quote illustrates very well why it is not enough that we only reduce our misbehaviors or negative impacts but why we need to focus on creating significant positive impacts in critical and relevant areas for society. This shift in our mindset and operations moves from analyzing sustainability problems to creating sustainable solutions.
Until recently, many companies have used to think and measure their environmental performance through the negative impacts such as carbon emissions, produced waste or the use of harmful materials. But exceedingly, we also see more and more companies that do lots of good things that are improving their own environmental performance, but also that of their clients and other stakeholders. Herein, handprints can be used for demonstrating these improvements.
For a long time, the problem was that there was no proper method to calculate these positive improvements. That is no longer the case, as the Finnish Research Institute VTT run a two-year project(2016-2018) that created a methodology for carbon handprint calculations. Next, the methodology is expanded to other handprint calculations besides carbon. Kudos to science!
Materialising the swift
With consumers demanding more from packaging companies, and consumer packaged goods companies setting sustainable packaging goals tied to 2025, it seems the right time for this shift in thinking, measuring, and doing.
With a history dating all the way back to 1930, Walki is using its extensive material experience and expertise to accelerate the world’s transition into a zero-waste future. At Walki, we are developing new technologies, promoting experiments, and supporting the scaling-up of viable innovations. We do this to treat the biggest sustainability challenges in the material world with solid, science-based solutions. By running experiments with our customers, we are learning which solutions are the most useful, and where we can grow our own handprint even further.
With this in mind, we suggest that footprints are only half the picture. The other half is just coming into view. Raise your hand, if you are willing to think and measure the positive impacts that we all can make for a circular tomorrow.
Walki – we contribute with our actions.