Uponor: Sustainability leadership elevated

Challenge

Uponor has a thoughtful and comprehensive sustainability strategy built on four United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Uponor, like many multi-national companies, balances competing challenges; therefore, sustainability efforts were not always a primary focus of company leadership due to other constraints and priorities.

During spring 2020, the dedicated sustainability staff at Uponor moved out of the marketing department to report directly to company leadership, increasing their impact and influence. This change resulted from good relationships with company leadership as well as the desire to increase the visibility of circularity work within the company. They met monthly with leadership to report on progress and presented at all-company staff meetings. When the opportunity to suggest a restructuring appeared, the Director of Brand and Sustainability took the initiative to ask for the reporting structure change and felt comfortable taking that risk because of the growing importance of sustainability to corporate strategy.

Result

This change has more deeply integrated circularity in the business culture including by elevating the role of the sustainability team–a growing cross-functional group of staff representing finance, marketing, operations, and supply chain that develops and implements projects to further the company’s sustainability strategy.

With fresh energy and knowledge, the sustainability team developed new projects. Based on the suggestion of a colleague in Research and Development, the group is working to develop a circularity gradient to standardize the concept of circularity and create a means to measure solutions. The metric will help the team stay on the same page and track progress on projects across the company. The team developed a sustainability survey to help determine with the vendor selection process. This project grew out of a recognition that the company needed to have better tools to incorporate sustainability criteria into decision making around vendors and suppliers. The projects coming out of the energized team demonstrate how a new organizational structure creates space for meaningful change in integrating circularity into business practices.

There are many levers, or approaches, that can create and scale up change to existing systems in our society. Uponor’s restructured sustainability work represents an example of instituting catalyzing platforms. The new organizational structure elevates sustainability as a company priority and, as evidenced through the sustainability team, energizes staff to develop tangible projects that will apply company priorities in business practices. This case study demonstrates how companies can utilize organizational models to prioritize circularity principles.

Lessons Learned

• Create structures to regularly update senior leadership on circularity projects.
• Highlight sustainability efforts at all-company meetings.
• Share compelling research and examples from other companies to inspire colleagues and encourage healthy competition.
• Develop a sustainability team of cross-functional staff (supply chain, finance, operations, marketing) who are working on projects to achieve company sustainability goals.
• Create shared knowledge around circularity among staff and leadership through resource sharing and conversations.