Sustainability
The topic of sustainability is firmly anchored in our values and has been an integral part of our corporate culture for decades. Our aim is to have as little impact as possible on the environment. As a globally active company, we pursue a holistic approach to sustainability along the entire product life cycle.
Climate neutrality
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity — stopping climate change is a task for the whole of society. As part of the Bosch Group, Bosch Power Tools is also committed to play a pioneering role in climate protection. With more than 400 plants worldwide, Bosch has been climate neutral since 2020 (scope 1 and 2).* Our climate neutrality strategy comprises four levers: increasing energy efficiency, generating energy ourselves from renewable sources (new clean power), purchasing electricity from renewable sources (green electricity), and — as the last resort — using carbon credits to offset remaining CO₂ emissions.
These four levers are being continuously optimized in order to ensure the greatest possible impact. In addition, we are pursuing the goal of systematically reducing upstream and downstream emissions (scope 3) beyond the company's immediate sphere of influence by 15 percent in absolute terms by 2030 compared with 2018 — that is, irrespective of our company’s growth. As a result, our focus is increasingly shifting to our activities in purchasing, logistics, and product development.
"We are working just as consistently to achieve our scope 3 target. At Bosch Power Tools, the focus is primarily on the materials used, product design and packaging, as well as circular economy models."
Isabelle Gola, Head of Sustainability at Bosch Power Tools
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Circular economy for an even more sustainable product portfolio
With our circular economy strategy, we aim to achieve the highest possible level of sustainability along the entire product life cycle – from procurement, production, use, return and refurbishment, to recycling and reuse of materials.
For this purpose, we want to create cycles either within Bosch or close them outside our company as part of established recycling processes. We are therefore not only reducing material use and the carbon footprint of our products, thus helping to attain our scope 3 target, but are also preventing potential risks in relation to compliance with environmental and social standards. This is because by recycling materials, risky parts of the value chain in particular can also be eliminated.
Ecodesign and materials
With the help of product life cycle analyses, we identify how our products can be designed to be as sustainable as possible throughout the entire value chain. Our goal is to find out where the most intensive CO₂ hotspots are for the various product families. For this purpose, our power tools are manually disassembled into their individual components and examined in detail. This enables us to improve future product generations.
Plastics
We are aware of our responsibility and are constantly working to reduce our environmental footprint. Plastics are a major consideration in this regard and constitute an integral element of virtually all our products and tool cases. These have a significant impact on our CO₂ footprint. Through various projects, we have taken key steps along the way across all our product areas, such as cutting down on virgin plastic, increasing the proportion of recycled material used in our products, switching to cardboard packaging and eliminating unnecessary components like single-use polybags.
Blazing the trail in our development of sustainable products is the Quigo Green cross line laser. It was our first measuring tool to feature a housing and accessories made from 90 percent recycled plastic. Now we are going one step further and expanding this sustainable product concept to cover our entire measuring tools portfolio for DIYers. From autumn 2023, 23 reworked measuring tools, and their corresponding accessories and packaging, will be available with the new sustainable concept and will be made from largely recycled materials.
The packaging for the new generation of tools no longer includes any polybags and all of it is made from at least 70 percent recycled fibers. At the same time, packaging sizes have been reduced to optimize logistics and conserve resources by comparison to the previous products.
We are working at full speed to successively make our entire product portfolio more sustainable.The insights we have gained so far, such as the potential and limitations of recycled materials, will continue to flow into our processes and production.
Paper
Maintaining a responsible relationship with our forests is a topic close to our hearts. That is why we have committed to using paper with a high share of recycled paper fibers for our packaging and instruction manuals.
But that's not all: As of the end of 2022, the paper-based abrasives from Bosch Power Tools in Europe are all FSC®-certified. This relates to all paper-based abrasives manufactured after 09/2021, with the exception of the C410 and C420 series, which are not currently certified. FSC®-certification serves as a guarantee that the paper used in the manufacture of our abrasive papers throughout Europe is is made of material from well-managed, FSC®-certified forests and other controlled sources. In this way, we are also reinforcing the sense of responsibility throughout our supply chain.
Responsible supply chain
As part of the Bosch Group, we want to work with all our business partners to find answers to the global social and ecological challenges of our times. This is underpinned by a mutual understanding of sustainability by all stakeholders. For more information about sustainable supply chain management at Bosch, click here.
Since 2023, Bosch Power Tools have registered more than 60 percent of all its production facilities with SEDEX. The Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX) is a private member organization whose objective is to keep our supply chain socially and ecologically responsible, create transparency, monitor working conditions and assess potential risks. Our target is to sign up all our production facilities around the world by 2025.
Cooperation
WWF Germany and Bosch Power Tools
For us, business and responsibility go hand in hand. That is why we are ramping up our commitment to sustainability through our long-term partnership with WWF Germany and speeding up our transformation. As part of our collaboration, we will be entering into critical, focused dialogue with the experts from WWF in areas of our value creation that are relevant to sustainability. That includes, for example, the climate and packaging strategy, as well as issues relating to the circular orientation of our company. Another component is the sensitization and training of our associates in order to accompany the sustainable transformation of the company. At the same time, Bosch Power Tools is supporting the WWF in their objective to protect nature, and is funding projects in Asia to accelerate the change that is so desperately needed to reverse the current climate and biodiversity crisis.
Facts, Figures, Data
Open and honest, comprehensive and transparent — that is the claim we pursue with our sustainability reporting. Because we want to be not only a responsible, but also a trustworthy partner in society.
With our annual sustainability report, we make our actions transparent — comprehensive and comparable, in accordance with the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative.
* With its more than 400 locations worldwide, the Bosch Group has been carbon neutral since 2020 (scope 1 & 2). For this, remaining emissions of 0.7 million metric tons of CO₂ were offset by carbon credits in 2022. Scopes 1, 2, and 3 are used in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard. To enable comparability between the climate impact of the various greenhouse gases and substances of relevance for the climate, emissions are presented in CO₂ equivalents. In this report, we have taken into account the effects of CO₂ and of other greenhouse gases, as well as climate-relevant substances, to the extent that these are of relevance for the analysis. For ease of reading, we use the terms CO₂ and CO₂ equivalents synonymously.
