Ricoh Industrie France named as first UPM Raflatac Label Life Awards winner

The Label Life Awards program recognizes strong performance in responsibility and rewards a specific sustainability initiative.

More than 70 of UPM Raflatac’s suppliers were eligible to win the first award with four being invited to the final at the UPM Raflatac Wrocław factory in Poland.

Following presentations from the four finalists, and intensive questioning from a panel of judges, Ricoh Industrie France was selected as the winner for its commitment to biodiversity at its Colmar plant in the north-east of France.

The Japanese owned business has developed a self-financing project titled Vie et Couleurs (Life and Colors), which focuses on habitat development and species conservation around the factory site, including planting natural wildflower meadows, establishing a wetland, a traditional apple species orchard, nest boxes and beehives.

Employees, local residents and schools are involved in an ongoing education program on biodiversity and wider sustainability.

Sami Poukka, UPM Raflatac vice president of sourcing, said: ‘It is of strategic importance that UPM Raflatac retains responsibility expertise in-house. We work with a wide range of suppliers in order to deliver high quality products to the markets. Many of our suppliers have been working extremely hard to develop their responsibility actions.

‘We felt it important to not only recognize this through the awards, but also to learn from their experiences.’

Elodie Heintzmann, environment manager at Ricoh Industrie France, added: ‘We are delighted to be recognized for our actions. The event has been a huge learning experience for us – not only by participating but discovering how our peers in similar industries are tackling responsibility themselves. We will certainly be taking home a great number of ideas and hope to enter again in 2016.’

‘It is really important for business to engage seriously with responsibility and to go deeper than just words with clear strong actions,’ concluded jury member Piotr Nieznanski, head of conservation at WWF Poland. ‘The finalists all showed their commitment to sustainability.’