Implementing a fresh sustainability framework for clients.
Sustainability | Tools & Processes
In today’s economic landscape, brands are increasingly under scrutiny for their ability to implement sustainable practices. KISKA enables clients to make sustainable progress across our many services – empowering responsible and environmentally low-impact approaches and methods.
Each year, notably more brands across all industries are identifying sustainability as a key topic for consideration. It’s no longer just a ‘nice-to-have’, it’s becoming an essential factor for successful brand building and product design. Here at KISKA, we’ve been devising how to incorporate sustainable principles, strategies, and tools into our workflow. With some of the brightest minds and top technologies already at our fingertips, the question was where to apply them for the most impact.
The passion-project of our very own Rosanna Haider, Florian Sametinger, and Stephan Lintner, this framework brings together every team in our studio and explicitly defines our next steps. KISKA is already armed with state-of-the-art tools and practices; it’s a natural next step to actively implement sustainability principles into our value chain.
“It is our responsibility to support and guide our clients on this journey. Without considering sustainability, we’d fail to make them futureproof”
– Rosanna Haider, Product Management Consultant
KISKA is in a unique position – the epicentre of project conception. With such a wide range of clients in so many different industries, our scope for potential impact is huge. Therefore, we are actively advertising and implementing sustainable options alongside our regular agency services to all our clients. We’ve designed zero-waste products and e-mobility solutions for clients in the past: and we’re keen to keep the momentum going!
Check out how sports brands are affected by sustainability and changing customer values
We offer to consult on the topic of sustainability or any of its underlying activities (such as eco-assessment or circular design) and how clients can ensure their brand is future-proof. If a brand chooses to, they can select strategies which align with their own environmental ideals – making their brand sustainable by default. We’ve hand-picked from established sustainability tools to create custom solutions for our client’s challenges.
“We want to implement sustainability principles, strategies, and tools by default into our processes – so clients can benefit from the outcome”
– Florian Sametinger
For instance, in Engineering, our experts can consider low-carbon material sourcing or ease of repair. In Product Design, we can perform eco-assessments of materials, to ensure ethical sourcing or ease of disassembly. At the start of the process, our Research team can provide insights into the market or a watertight strategic plan for a client to generate the most impact. In Apparel, we can design for recyclability and dematerialisation from the very beginning of the project, to create solid end-of-life solutions. But anyway, we’ve never believed in throwaway goods. We design products to last.
Sustainability has a different definition in every service – and what works for one team, may not be transferrable to another. That’s why we’ve taken an integrated approach and defined Sustainability Ambassadors within our core teams – people who are experts in their field and can apply sustainability holistically. Some of our experts already have a background or education in this field, so they can bring their skills on more than one level. We’re also constructing a digital knowledge space to allow people to inform themselves and learn about where best to make changes.
“We can inform and inspire our clients to help them make better choices”
– Stephan Lintner, Lead Product Designer
We’re also partnered with the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. This allows us to explore future possibilities using their ‘footprint calculation’ tool – the Higg Index. This is the benchmark tool for measuring sustainability in value chains in Europe. And once we understand the challenges, we can start to solve them. And since its launch in 2011, it has rapidly become the leading environmental and social assessment tool in the apparel industry. We’re keen to start applying the learnings we’ve gained internally on our projects for those clients who’re open to investing in it.
The sustainability project at KISKA has not been taken lightly. Making steps towards a kinder future is a subject that many of our creative experts take very seriously. In fact, it’s impossible not to care about the environment when your HQ is nestled in the beautiful Austrian Alps. Keep watching this space – there’s still more to come.
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