USM and Sustainability
- Circularity at heart
USM evolves with you – our understanding of sustainability
Rethink, redesign, revalue sums up our understanding of sustainability. This starts before the product with the question of individual needs. During its lifespan, USM can be redefined again and again – this makes USM a valued, consistent companion for life, and generations.
What and how much do you really need? What purposes should a piece of furniture serve? Experienced consultants and virtual planning tools enable us to support you to create a bespoke and conscious purchase. So that you get exactly what you really need, tailored to your current requirements. But don‘t worry, once furniture has been designed, it can always be rethought and adapted to new circumstances.
Each piece of USM furniture is unique, planned and assembled especially for you. Our furniture is designed to be forever reconfigured. Thanks to the high-quality finish and clever design, all components can be exchanged and extended at any time without any problems. This leads to limitless creative freedom, more individuality in design and almost infinite cycles of use.
Thanks to the high quality, colours that never fade and a 100% modular system, decades-old USM furniture can be seamlessly combined and upgraded with new components. We believe a product that adapts to your style, your life, your changing needs is relevant and loved. USM furniture is a valuable companion for life, across generations.
Our vision - becoming a fully circular business
We want to extend circularity principles beyond our products. That means adopting this philosophy throughout our company – from our product development to our manufacturing, and new business models, from
our communications to our supply chain, operations and the
expertise of our people.
Our long-standing commitment to sustainability focuses on four aspects:
Products – Durable and circular
The longer a product lives, the less it impacts the environment. We build products that endure: versatility of function, wear-resistant materials, fine craftsmanship, reverse compatibility and timeless style all ensure that USM furniture lasts over generations. Each piece of furniture is a unique item, planned and assembled individually according to customer needs – this ensures there is minimal waste and never a surplus. We design to reconfigure – all component materials can be carefully disassembled, checked, and returned to be reassembled. Though our products can be recycled, this rarely ever needs to happen: there is a large second-hand market, particularly in Europe, that USM actively supports.
Our product lines USM Haller and USM Kitos M, accounting for more than 92% of our revenue, carry the Cradle-to-Cradle® certification. It is the leading multi-attribute standard used globally across industries for designing and making products that enable a healthy, fair and sustainable future according to the world’s most advanced science-based measures.
● C2C Certificate for USM Haller
● C2C Certificate for USM Kitos M
All our four main product lines carry the UL Greenguard Certification for low chemical emission. Having undergone rigorous scientific testing to meet stringent emissions requirements, this certification approves that our products contribute to a healthier indoor air quality.
● Greenguard Certificate for USM Haller
● Greenguard Certificate for USM Haller table
● Greenguard Certificate for USM Kitos
● Greenguard Certificate for USM Privacy Panels
Manufacturing – Responsible and accountable
Our approach to conscious and responsible manufacturing begins with our decision to remain based in our Swiss home. All USM products are produced in the factory in Münsingen, just outside Bern in Switzerland, where the family business originated. Our manufacturing processes are carefully built around the goals of maximum safety, energy efficiency and almost total recyclability at every stage. Nearly all of our chrome used is trivalent chrome which is much less harmful to the environment than conventional hexavalent chrome. The powder coating is manufactured in state-of-the-art facilities without the use of solvents or heavy metals such as lead.
People – Social fairness and diversity
Caring about people and their work culture makes both moral and economic sense for a company. Particularly for a company that prizes quality as we do, we recognise that there is no way that we could manufacture the way we do without a healthy, dedicated, highly skilled workforce all acting in concert. As a Swiss company, respect for human rights is engrained in our culture. USM work environments are characterised by mutual esteem and tolerance, gender pay equality, diverse and barrier-free offices. We maintain our culture of welcoming ideas for the business from every area of the company. We invest into the next generation of skilled engineers and designers. We actively encourage professional development and support employee health and wellbeing. All this results in an above-average employee loyalty and an exceptionally low fluctuation rate. The average time of employment at USM internationally is 11.5 years (15.5 years at Swiss headquarter).
We will always look for ways that we can support the wider community: The not-for-profit charitable organization FONDATION USM promotes and supports individuals and organisations in both fields, culture and science around the world. Among the projects are the «HUE+MAN Design Competition», that spotlights emerging designers of colour, and the «USM Design Grant» awarded annually to art & design students to promote innovation.
Emissions – Zero as soon as possible
We recognise the immediate need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and have committed to set the following near-time company-wide emission reductions in line with the latest climate science:
• USM commits to reduce absolute direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 42% by 2030 from a 2021 base year.
• USM also commits to reduce other absolute indirect greenhouse gas emissions (scope 3) by 25% within the same timeframe.
(Our target boundary includes land-related emissions and removals from bioenergy feedstocks.)
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has approved USM’s above near-term science-based emissions reduction targets. The highly respected
climate action organisation, partnering with several renowned organisations including the United Nations Global Compact and the Word Wide Fund of Nature (WWF), enables companies worldwide to play their part in combating the climate crisis.
Want to know more about what we are doing to reduce our emissions? Read our most recent Sustainability Report.
