Designing the most sustainable furniture possible starts at the drawing board. The furniture’s construction and materials determine how complex the manufacturing process is, how long it will last and how environmentally friendly it will be to dispose of or recycle one day. The choice of upplier, manufacturing conditions and the employees’ skill level also havea major influence on a product’s environmental footprint. That’s why we work to create solutions that are as sustainable as possible at every tage of the process.
Manufacturing
We had a number of goals in mind when we revamped our production facility in 2015 to comply with the principles of a lean factory, ranging from short lead times and low inventories to more efficient manufacturing and waste prevention.
Another benefit of overhauling our processes is that we can identify errors at an early stage so they aren’t passed down the production chain any more. We’ve added another layer of quality control in the leather cutting department since mistakes at this stage are especially costly. The result: we save time and raw materials every day that our factory is running.
As soon as our new material warehouse is complete, we will move all parts and interim storage facilities from manufacturing to the new central warehouse. There, the material will be picked centrally and brought to manufacturing as and when it is required.
Speaking of manufacturing, we only power up our systems when we have received an order and a customer somewhere in the world has ordered precisely this item. We do not manufacture to stockpile items – we make them to order. In our opinion, this is the most efficient way, and the best way of protecting valuable resources.
Wood
Wood, a renewable raw material, is one of the main materials that we use to build furniture. That’s why COR currently employs around a dozen joiners.
Four beech frame timbers form the stable base of every Conseta*, for instance. This COR classic also has solid beechwood incorporated into its armrests and back. On average, our joiners go through 750 cubic metres of this renewable raw material each year. That’s about 25 fully loaded articulated lorries arriving at our site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück year after year. This wood stores significant amounts of CO2 for as long as the furniture lasts (and for COR furniture, that usually means for a very long time).
Weit müssen die Holzlaster allerdings nicht fahren, denn wir bei COR kaufen unser Vollholz traditionell in der Nachbarschaft. Im Sauerland beispielsweise, einem der größten mitteleuropäischen Waldgebiete mit milden Wintern und feuchten Lehmböden, finden Buchen ideale Wachstumsbedingungen. 100 Prozent unseres Massivholzes ist FSC- oder PEFC-zertifiziert und stammt aus nachhaltig bewirtschafteten deutschen Wäldern.
But the timber lorries don’t have far to drive. At COR, we traditionally buy our solid wood from our neighbours. For instance, in the Sauerland region, one of Central Europe’s largest forest regions, which offers ideal growth conditions for beech with its mild winters and moist clay soil. 100% of our solid timber holds FSC or PEFC certification and comes from German forests managed using sustainable practices.
We use offcuts from the woodworking process as fuel to heat our production halls. The combustion process emits the same amount of CO2 as the wood has previously absorbed. And because it would be a waste to use trees for short-lived products, we switched the majority of our paper consumption to recycled part in 2023. At COR, printer and photocopier paper, hand towels and toilet paper have been 100% recycled paper since then.
*Our top-selling COR sofa
Foam
Upholstery is one of the things that matter most when making a piece of furniture that is comfortable to sit on. Each COR model has its own customised upholstery composition that we select from approximately 80 different foam qualities.
As a matter of principle, we use very high-quality foam materials to make sure that their life and cycle times are as long as possible. Petroleum is the primary raw material used to make foam. At the end of its life, recycling is almost never an option, though, so foam is typically incinerated.
That’s why our development department is actively looking for natural materials that might replace petroleum-based foam as an upholstery material. Spring cores, down, feathers, natural latex, coconut fibre, cotton and wool are among the items that we are analysing and testing. Unfortunately, none of the materials we have tested so far lives up to our comfort and durability standards.
We source our down – which we use in sofa cushions, for example – from two suppliers in Germany and Italy, who guarantee that our down is either recycled or comes from animals for slaughter after they have been killed. Live-plucked down, which causes severe suffering for the animal, is not used at COR.
Leather and fabric
The leather that we use comes exclusively from European cowhides and is a by-product of the food industry. We only use leather hides tanned and processed in Germany and Italy that are allowed to carry the “Blue Angel” environmental label. The mineral chromium III tanning process does not present any health risks. We sell offcuts from leather processing to the leather industry where they are turned into belts and purses, for instance. This means that almost none of the leather that we order goes to waste.
Additionally, the upholstery materials that we use are made in Europe and nowhere else. All COR upholstery fabrics bear the “Blue Angel” eco-label. This seal of approval confirms that materials do not contain substances that harm human health or the environment and comply with strict emission requirements. In other words, COR’s upholstered furniture is both comfortable and non-hazardous to sit on. The wool for COR coverings comes from sheep that have not undergone mulesing.* This is guaranteed by our suppliers.
* Mulesing refers to a practice that is primarily used in Australia that is considered animal abuse. It sees strips of the sheep’s hindquarters removed in order to protect the animals from flystrike but is extremely painful for the animals.
Development and design
Our development and design department aims to achieve not one but several sustainability-related goals when developing new models and fine-tuning our existing portfolio of products.
Making our collection more environmentally friendly.
Many of our models have been sold for years – some even for decades. So we are constantly reviewing our furniture to find ways to make it even better. During the reporting period, for example, we have been searing for alternative materials to replace the petroleum-based foams we use for upholstery. We have investigated and tested cotton, maize and new wool mats, mats made from horsehair coconut fibre sewn onto jute, linen fleece, Painera wool, Tencel fibres and organic cotton, coir and natural latex.
The result
All of these materials have a smaller environmental footprint than petroleum-based foams. However, none of these materials fulfilled our requirements in terms of upholstery and processing quality, or durability. As a result, we are focussing on improving the repairability and separability of our upholstery materials.
Making a long life possible for furniture.
We opt for sustainability as early as when we are choosing quality raw materials, such as certified beech, high-value woollen fabric and leather made in Europe. After all, material quality directly affects how durable and long-lasting a piece of furniture is. Our joiners, upholsterers, tailors and technicians also have expertise and skills that are a major factor in our furniture’s exceptionally long life expectancy. But because even the highest-quality components can fail every now and then, we design our furniture to make repairs as easy as possible. For instance, the fabric cover on our classic Conseta can be easily removed using the channel bead – making it a cinch to replace a defective steel spring.
Designing beyond trends and fashion
In 1954 we started manufacturing upholstered furniture in accordance with the principle of ‘quality in its purest form’. Even then, we didn’t want to advance the throwaway mindset. Instead, we designed our furniture with durability in mind. We want to develop timeless, holistic design that considers all elements that make furniture a good place to sit. Our Conseta sofa has been part of our portfolio for over half a century and still looks as fresh as ever. But we didn’t commission a ‘classic’. Conseta has simply logically become one thanks to our design philosophy.
Making recycling and reuse easier
After a two-year development period, our most ambitious refurbishment project yet was launched at the end of 2023. The CORever initiative will see all COR furniture become returnable after use (with the only exception being furniture from smokers’ households – not because we have anything against smokers but because the smoky smell cannot be removed from the upholstery). We simply have the furniture delivered back to COR by our specialist etailers on our hauliers’ return journeys with no additional carbon emissions. There, the CORever team carefully checks what needs to be repaired, exchanged or serviced before we can resell the refurbished item of furniture. Furniture that cannot be reused in any way is dismantled into its individual parts and disposed of correctly.
The CORever initiative is therefore the start of a real closed-loop material cycle: what comes from COR returns to COR. And what might have previously ended up in landfill can now be refurbished and reused. At the same time, CORever is an option for people who might find not be able to afford a new item of COR furniture.
The first few months of the CORever project went very well. The oldest item of furniture returned to us so far was a Conseta from the late 1960s. A real jewel! This COR sofa is now also ready to find a new home. Who knows, maybe we’ll see it again in a few decades’ time?
Packaging and logistics
Conserving resources is one of our top priorities when packaging and transporting our furniture. A packaging machine acquired in 2020 has helped us to optimise packaging for all furniture delivered in cardboard. On average, we have saved 18% of cardboard material – both reducing cardboard consumption and cutting transport costs and the amount of storage space needed.
We were able to make a few additional optimisations during the reporting period and thus save on packaging material and waste. For chairs wrapped in film to protect them against dust and abrasion before being packed in a box, we reduced the film thickness from 60 μ to 45 μ. Two of our cushion suppliers have switched from using poly bags to Corlette trolleys covered with stretch film. We have developed multi-use bags with a zip for the Cordia Lounge cushion sets. These bags are then collected and reused.
All of our sales and transport packaging is registered with the environmental services provider Interseroh. As such, we make a contribution towards their disposal and share in their costs.
Wherever possible, we use packaging materials from our B2B customers multiple times. Unfortunately, the first tests using reusable packaging from lorry tarpaulins did not yield the results we had hoped for. On the one hand, our furniture is customised so it comes in a wide variety of dimensions and needs a large number of different packaging sizes. On the other hand, our products cannot be packed tightly enough to make sure that they arrive at customers undamaged 100% of the time. So any material savings on reusable packaging material would come at the cost of a significantly higher risk during transportation.
We moved logistics from our own COR fleet to largely using an external logistics firm in 2016. Since then, we have scheduled furniture deliveries using a smart route planning programme, avoiding special journeys and empty runs wherever possible. Average lead times have become two to three weeks shorter, saving on (greenhouse gas) emissions and making our customers happier as a result.
Blue Angel
All COR upholstered furniture for the home has been recognised with the “Blue Angel” eco-label since 2017 – a testament to its environmentally friendly nature. This means that our furniture has been tested for harmful substances such as formaldehyde, solvents and plasticisers. Our DELTA solid wood table also received “Blue Angel” certification in 2023. Our other tables do not have “Blue Angel” certification due to their material configuration.
But furniture for the contract business has to be treated to make sure that it is flame-retardant (fire tests in accordance with BS5852, for example). The flame retardants and flame-retardant technologies we use cannot be certified under the “Blue Angel” standard. In this respect, fire protection and environmental considerations are, unfortunately, at odds with one another.
GREENGUARD
The GREENGUARD Gold Certificate demonstrates that we avoid volatile organic compound emissions indoors to the maximum extent possible. UL GREENGUARD Gold certification is internationally recognised within many green building rating systems, such as LEED, WELL and BREEAM, and in some instances is a requirement to receive this certification.
GEPRÜFTE SICHERHEIT
The GS mark confirms that our furniture fulfils the quality and safety standards of the German Product Safety Act (ProdSG). The product ranges of Alvo, Cordia easy chairs, Cordia chairs, Cordia Lounge easy chairs, Drop, Flint easy chairs, Floater electric desks, Jalis chairs, Jalis Lounge easy chairs, Jalis club chairs, Noto and Roc easy chairs ranges have all successfully passed the voluntary tests for this seal of approval.
