By Knud Bay Hojland, Managing Partner, StepUp Scaffold Europe.
Are you innovating to improve your organisation’s ESG score? This score is the objective measurement of your company’s performance with respect to Environmental, Social, and Governance issues. Innovation is vital for our industry to keep developing into a safer and more environmental-friendly future.
Scaffolding is an old trade, suggesting a scaffolding system was used to paint cave paintings some 17,000 years ago.
Fast forward thousands of years, in early 1900, Mr Palmer-Jones invented the scaffolding coupler, which became the industry standard coupling and the reason a scaffolding tube or standard (upright) to this day has a uniform outside diameter of 48.3mm.
As manufacturers to the scaffolding industry, we are limited by the long-lasting lifespan of our products and challenged because what we develop today must fit the same products manufactured decades ago. It makes me proud of our industry that we do not contribute to the “throw-away production” but instead focus on sustainable solutions designed to last for generations of use. However, still lots of improvements to achieve, and we will never stand still.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) score is the new black and a key focus we, as scaffolding manufacturers, need to incorporate into future production and development.
As a company, StepUp Scaffold are reviewing repair and re-use policies and how to reduce the number of component parts required for project packages. I hope we as an industry will share best practices and new funding to collectively contribute to bringing down our global ESG footprint without compromising safety and product development.