After several years of collaboration on environmental and quality issues, DGE is now going to assist Lekolar in developing their work on sustainability matters further. DGE will from now on conduct regular audits at Lekolar’s European suppliers with focus on the social and ethical aspects.
For Lekolar, a company that develops educational products such as school and preschool furniture and playground equipment, matters on social sustainability are central. The company’s code of conduct was established as early as in 2011. It is important to the company to produce their products in a responsible manner and to live up to public procurement contracts.
Pierre Lennartsson, Environment and Quality Manager at Lekolar, envisioned a few years ago the need to ensure that all suppliers comply with Lekolar’s code of conduct, and he therefore turned to DGE for help.
“We needed to have a system for our controls, and DGE helped us to fine-tune and develop a protocol for audits.”
Impartial assessment
Today, the collaboration between the companies consists of four audits per year, which DGE performs at Lekolar’s suppliers.
“Together we make a risk assessment of the supply chain to determine what we will focus on”, says Pierre Lennartsson and explains that in some countries and industries there is a higher risk of unsafe employment agreements, late wage payments and unsafe working conditions.
Besides social aspects, they also look at environmental aspects, such as power consumption, emissions and that the supplier follows the environmental laws.
“Because DGE is a third party, it is an impartial assessment of our suppliers, which gives it greater weight.”
Network for sustainability
Pierre Lennartsson sees the audits as a progress opportunity for the entire industry.
“The purpose of the audits is not to crack down on the suppliers. Instead it can help them to improve and increase their competitiveness.”
Lekolar is also in DGE’s newly established company network, where the companies discuss sustainability issues and the challenges they pose.
“It is a great forum for us, and the entire collaboration with DGE helps us to work more professionally with these topics”, Pierre Lennartsson sums up.