
Commitment No. 10
Green aluminum gives window shutters more sustainable credentials.
Griesser, the leading European provider of solar shading solutions, is setting new sustainability benchmarks by making use with immediate effect of the green aluminum which it recently presented in its window shutter product range. By using this more sustainable aluminum (which is made in Europe) in selected wing shutter models, Griesser will substantially reduce its corporate carbon footprint. The new green aluminum window shutter products will be manufactured at the recently expanded state-of-the-art facility in Nenzing (Austria), where the company’s further window shutter models are also produced.
Of all the models in the Griesser product range, its window shutters use by far the most aluminum per window in their manufacture, and thus also make the biggest carbon footprint. Within its window shutter range, Griesser’s wing shutters – which consist of a solid frame with largely fixed or movable slats – are particularly popular.
With immediate effect, these models will now use green aluminum in their manufacture. In concrete terms, Griesser’s 70×30 mm SYS frame profiles and its 50 mm slats will now be made entirely from green aluminum material. So the Model A traditional wing shutter, which is the company’s most popular window shutter Europe-wide, will now have all its main components manufactured with the new low-carbon aluminum.
“Switching the manufacture of our wing shutters to green aluminum was an obvious priority,” explains Urs Neuhauser, CEO of the Griesser Group. “Our wing shutters account for a very large part of the total production volumes in our window shutter range. And our Model A is our most popular of all, making up 53% of all the wings we produce. We prioritize all our sustainability actions by the impact they can have. And that’s why we’ve decided to start with these products.”
Quality and stability at the usual high Griesser levels
By switching to green aluminum, Griesser can make particularly sizeable progress in reducing its carbon footprint. Green aluminum consists 65% of pre- and post-consumer scrap and only 35% of primary aluminum which is made in Europe using renewable energies.
By adopting green aluminum for the manufacture of its frame profiles and slats, Griesser’s Nenzing facility will feed some 160 tonnes of green aluminum a year into the window shutters it produces. This in turn will lower Griesser’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by a further 300 tonnes, or by some 35% within its window shutter segment.
When rendering its production more sustainable, Griesser makes no compromises on the quality and stability fronts. All its green aluminum products carry the same warranties as before which, at six years, are above the industry average. As with further Griesser products, these greener model options are EPD-certificated. And visually, too, these green aluminum shutters show no observable differences.
“This wing shutter development is only our first step towards a green aluminum future,” Urs Neuhauser continues. “We’ll be gradually switching the production of more of our frame and slat sizes along with further components to all-green-aluminum over the next few months. Our aim is to have moved our entire window shutter range to green aluminum by the end of next year. And after that, further products from the Griesser range will continue to steadily follow, all to help us achieve our longer-term climate goal of total decarbonization by 2050.”