Sustainability

COPRO is strongly committed to sustainable entrepreneurship.

On the one hand in our own activities: certification is no longer a confirmation of confidence in quality and safety, but also in sustainability. For example, more and more environmental requirements are being integrated into the certification process.
On the other hand, all COPRO employees strive to carry out all activities in a sustainable manner.

After all, in addition to ‘Performance’ and ‘People’, ‘Planet’ is the third pillar in COPRO’s strategic plan.

Our core activity of certification and inspection

We are increasingly orienting our core activities to climate and environmental impact and circularity, and are looking for solutions that contribute to a "greener" world.

• COPRO has been for more than 25 years a certification body for recycled granulates. In Flanders, 95 % of all construction and demolition debris is recycled and reused as granulates.
• COPRO certifies high-quality concrete granulate. Like this you turn concrete into concrete again, 100% circular!
• COPRO has recently been recognised as certifying body of the CO₂-Performance Ladder, a management system that stimulates companies to reduce their CO₂ emissions.
• COPRO recently administrates the certification of NTMB-materials (ecological and technical-natural construction). The purpose of these products is to promote nature development.
• COPRO participates in the Green Public Procurement actions of the regional authorities.
• COPRO is developing the execution certification of aboveground and underground infiltration facilities for rainwater. These systems combat drought and water scarcity and help prevent floods caused by climate change.

Energy

• The COPRO office building is almost energy neutral, which was very progressive during the concept and construction phase. Energy consumption for heating, ventilation, cooling and warm water is minimal and is derived from green energy sources.
• 90 solar panels cover most of our energy consumption.
• Heating and cooling is done with heat recovery from deep drilling.
• The Researchpark will be a Green Energy Park in the future, and will be fully energy self-sufficient. We are studying the connection to the future heat and energy grid of the Green Energy Park. The master plan of the Researchpark also contains the objective: CO₂ neutral in 2030.

Sustainable procurement

• All the consumed electricity is generated from renewable energy sources.
• There are 4 charging points available for electric cars. Visitors can charge for free.
• We have switched to 100 % recycled paper.
• One of our objectives last year was 20 % less paper consumption and 30 % less colour printing compared to the previous year. Result: 18 % less paper consumption and 35 % less colour printing. In this way we save a stack of paper  5 meters high. We achieved this through simple interventions thanks to ideas from various colleagues.
• We also think about small actions, like switching from cans to glass bottles for the drinks.
• Internal paper distribution is a thing of the past. Our mail boxes remain empty. All documents, from contracts to expense reports, are digitally managed and distributed.
• Financial reserves are only invested in recognized SRI-products (sustainable & responsible investments)

Greening and biodiversity

• Hedges have been planted around our office building and not lawn everywhere. These hedges create fauna corridors and form a home for a fox with its young, rabbits and numerous birds.
• Our office has a green roof.
• The rainwater is reused as much as possible.

Waste (prevention)

• On all possible places, scrap paper is collected and reused.
• All waste is sorted.
• Printing is strongly discouraged and everything is printed recto-verso in black and white as standard. Our inspectors have replaced their mobile printers with digital processes.
• We are working on a project regarding digital delivery notes of our certificate holders.
• We support digital processes at our customers.

Communication and collaboration

• In September 2020 MyCOPRO was launched, with digital tools for our clients to further digitalise the certification process.
  • Via Digilab, data transfer between laboratories and COPRO is fully digitised. Thousands of lab reports per year are now handled entirely electronically.
  • Thanks to Numbers, certificate holders can digitally transfer their production declarations to COPRO.
• Our fax? Gone.
• Electronic invoicing:
  • Outgoing invoices are sent digitally for 90 %. Awareness-raising campaigns are ongoing to achieve 100 %.
  • All incoming invoices are digitised. The internal approval processes are completely digital. Printing, copying, filing is a thing of the past.
  • 85 % of the invoices are directly read digitally. Actions to our suppliers are ongoing in order to increase this further.
• All internal personnel documents have been digitised.

Mobility