Tammer has published its first eight Environmental Product Declarations displaying the verified carbon impacts of its single and double leaf sheet metal doors - and has begun preparations to develop more EPDs for its wider product line.
Tammer’s Sustainability and Quality Manager Anu Marmor explains that their EPDs are about much more than compliance.
“We don’t just market sustainability,’’ explains Anu. “Sustainability is part of our DNA and affects how we do everything. This is what determines our efficiencies. And so with EPDs, we know our product better and we know our processes better. They help us ensure our processes are as efficient as possible without wasting time, materials, and resources.”
“That means everyone in the company needs to be involved in sustainability - from research and development to sales. And that means being fluent in the data so that we can innovate and deliver projects sustainably and also talk about it credibly with our customers.”
Around 50 employees working across research and development, project, and sales will receive training to understand the data that makes up an EPD, and all of their nearly 300 employees will receive an overview at their quarterly information day.
Tammer’s sustainability journey
The story of Tammer begins with two strangers and a pizza in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Back in 1995, two ferry passengers struck up a conversation that quickly evolved into a pizza-fueled brainstorming session about creating a new door production company. That led to the launch of Tammer just a few months later.
Now in its 30th year of business, Tammer has grown into the largest project-based door factory in the Nordic region with a strong reputation for quality with clients across construction, real estate maintenance, and shipbuilding using both their doors and windows.
For most of its history, Tammer had been managing its environmental impacts based on requirements set by legislation in Estonia where the factory is located.
However, around 80% of their products are exported and their largest market is Sweden, which has been leading Europe on issues of sustainability - including when it comes to assessing EPDs.
This spurred a change of mindset around 2018 in how Tammer viewed sustainability - not just as necessary requirements, but as a core value that drives quality and international competitiveness.
Previously, for example, they would instinctively apply for permits to cover the amount of pollution they emit. By adopting sustainability as a core value, they instinctively think instead about how to reduce pollution to the lowest possible level by first improving process efficiencies.
Anu brought in sustainability specialist Stina Silluste and together they began driving this change at Tammer. As they explained to Estonia’s main business newspaper, embracing genuine sustainability means being humble and transparent about everything you do not yet know, as well as sharing expertise with external partners.
Tammer joined Green Tiger, for example, a coalition of companies across Estonia who are committed to collective action on sustainability.
In their initial wave of excitement, Tammer set itself very ambitious sustainability goals before realising that this transformation can be difficult and slow at first but that persistence can embed long term positive results. Sustainability is a marathon, not a quick sprint, as Tammer now outlines with its sustainability goals.
As part of this marathon, Tammer has now published their first eight EPDs on EPD Hub with the assistance of LCA Support.
Leading the conversation
After feeling in recent years that they are behind the market in their use and understanding of EPDs, at least in comparison to the Swedish construction sector, Tammer has gone through a sharp learning curve and is now in a stronger position to extract deeper value from EPDs in the years ahead.
“We started looking into EPDs two and half years ago and at first we didn’t understand anything, but we are half way there,” Anu says humbly.
In addition to being an essential requirement for many Swedish construction tenders, EPDs are also now increasingly important in Finland and Norway, and looming EU-wide legislation will increase their importance across the continent. In future, EPDs won’t just be required but will be increasingly scrutinised with the data determining purchasing decisions. Meanwhile, EPDs are relatively unknown in shipbuilding but Tammer is sharing its knowledge there too.
“In future, we hope there will be a much wider understanding of EPD data,’’ says Anu. “We are already sharing this knowledge with customers and it can be quite a positively surprising reaction when they understand it.”
Tammer has now set up its own Tammer Academy to support the sharing of practical and professional knowledge within the company with Stina leading EPD education. There’s also Tammer’s Green Club for sustainability enthusiasts across the company to contribute and engage with sustainability-related topics at work and at home.
Measures to enhance sustainability at Tammer include investment in renewable energy and more economical energy solutions with better monitoring and analysis of consumption, investment in new technology for the automation and digitalisation of processes, and enhanced sorting, reduction, reuse and repurposing of materials to support a circular economy.
“And each year we are visiting fairs all over the world to judge new materials that could enhance the quality and sustainability of our products based on the characteristics that our customers require.”
Tammer is also now contributing to the wider discussion around how EPDs as a system can be improved for the whole construction sector, particularly highlighting the need for better access to data.
Tammer celebrates its 30th anniversary in September and has completed a modern rebrand to mark the occasion with a new website rolling out at Tammer.ee where you can learn more about their product lines for doors and windows.