As part of Jacobi’s journey to become the most sustainable company in our industry, we are fully aware that we need to ensure we are making the correct choices to improve in any areas we can. As part of this we are always considering the most sustainable ways to carry out our business.
There is a change coming to the industry and we believe that by using our different aspects of sustainability we are making the choice now to go green. It is a mentality that we are serious about, and it’s not just about making profits and being ‘seen’ to be an ethical and sustainable operator but instead about changing for the better.
Doing well, by doing good.
Go Green Projects
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GO GREEN – RAW MATERIALS
From the Start: Raw Materials
The very start of our product’s existence is the raw materials that it is made from. As a company we have been focused on coconut shell as our raw material of choice. It holds many benefits and is certainly the most sustainable raw material we can make our product from today. Despite this, our R&D teams are constantly working to explore this further. We are testing alternative raw materials and looking at the way we handle our raw materials for the best solutions.
GO GREEN – CLEANTECH REVOLUTION
Production – CleanTech Revolution
You may have heard about some of the projects we have in place that address another area we are keen to make improvements in, our production and the production of our raw materials. We are pioneering key new technology for the charring process of raw materials that we want to implement across our supply chain to greatly improve the environmental impact of our products’ early production phase.
GO GREEN – PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Product Development
Product development along a sustainable ethos generates many different workflows for our teams. We increasingly work with our existing portfolio to incorporate renewable materials, but also to develop analogues using non-fossil fuel (e.g., coal, peat or lignite) sources. This is often a tremendous challenge for our innovation team as we need to revolutionise at all levels; even the fundamental manufacturing routes we use today. One example of this is the creation of multimillion dollar investments in the ability to produce costeffective coconut pellet alternatives to all markets.
Yet we go further still, and seek to optimise product usage with our customers, offering high performance activated carbons, thereby reducing waste, and the need for re-delivery and disposal transport journeys, peak product performance for as long as possible is key.
Our product team work with a clear target: Replace products in our portfolio today that are derived from fossil fuel products within the next 10 years*
It’s a bold statement, and we are the first and only activated carbon producer to make this pledge. We must protect and revolutionise what we do today for the betterment of tomorrow – it’s time to make a change.
* Within 5 years decrease by 50% the product mix using coal, and within 10 years remove all coal from the product lines, where a sustainable raw material alternative is technically available.
GO GREEN – PRODUCT EVOLUTION
Product Evolution
In our quest to bring change to the business we have been working behind the scenes for several years on many different product development projects, utilising our in-house teams of manufacturing and scientific experts to find new ways to serve our customers needs in a more efficient and cost effective way. One of these projects has been the development of our ‘coco pellets’. We are proud to launch two new ranges of coconut shell activated carbon pellets.
GO GREEN – APPLICATIONS FOCUS
Serving Sustainable Applications
Activated carbon is used across a variety of industries for many different applications. As a company, it would be the easy choice to follow the applications that could yield the most profit, but that doesn’t align with how we believe in doing business. Instead, we are working to serve the applications that are the most sustainable and the most environmentally impactful in a positive way.
This means we are working more with some of our applications that help with the treatment of water, air, soil, and the Earth. We are working to minimise contamination of the environment and natural resources as much as possible with our customers and strongly believe in working together for the future of our environment. Where carbon applications may have issues to be portrayed as sustainable, we can strive to make the part where carbon is used, as sustainable as possible – small changes can have large environmental impacts.
GO GREEN – APPLICATION INNOVATION
Application Innovation
In addition to choosing the product applications that are most sustainable, we tend to be a company that asks questions. Rather than simply following what has always been the standard for any product application, we like to get deeper into our customers’ requirements and see if there might be a better way to do things. We produce specially tailored product specifications that can outperform our competitors’ products and we rigorously test them and develop them in partnership with our customers because we believe that in the long run it makes a difference on so many levels, not just meeting the sustainability criteria.
GO GREEN – BRANDED PRODUCTS
Go Green – Product Choice – Branded Products
Since embarking on our journey to become the most sustainable we can be, we have had to take a look at our existing product portfolio. We wanted to identify the products that could be considered our most sustainable and where some of our other products fit alongside them. We then gave our products that fall into the truly sustainable category a kind of ‘stamp of approval’, if you will. We call it our green stamp.
GO GREEN – RE-ACTIVATION
Re-activation
If you have read our recent product life-cycle analysis then you’ll be more than aware of the benefits of re-activated activated carbon versus virgin activated carbon. It’s clear that by re-using and re-engineering our products after they have been used and then re-activated we end up with a product with a drastically reduced global warming potential. As a company we are actively expanding our re-activation facilities and regional coverage to help enable more spent media to come back to us from our customers and be reactivated to then be put to use again.
We have recently introduced the concept of ‘Ren’Activation’, where renewable products are added to not only replace but improve reactivated carbon returned to our municipal water treatment customers.