Golvkedjan is one of the country's largest flooring companies and lays about a quarter of all floors in Sweden. It is also the first in the flooring industry to measure its climate impact using the Our Impacts tool. Here you can read an interview with CEO Lars-Åke Lidén Vestman and KMA manager Stephan Lindberg who talk about what the work on climate calculation has meant so far.

1) How did you come to the decision to start measuring your climate impact? 

We started our sustainability work in earnest two years ago, when we saw clear signs of increased customer demands and an opportunity to create a competitive advantage by becoming better than our competitors in this area. During discussions with Social Venture Network, we were advised to calculate our climate impact. Partly because it is of course important to measure and understand your climate impact, and partly to be perceived as serious and ambitious companies by our customers and the outside world.

2) What have been your main lessons learned along the way to get a good and useful result? For example, how is data collection done with so many partners?

Above all, not to go too fast, but to take this step by step. In the first year, we know that the figures were not of the best quality, and we have not allowed our member companies to log into the tool, but we have entered all the data centrally (which our member companies submit once a year because they are all environmentally certified).

3) What has the Our Impacts tool meant for the work?

The tool has made our environmental work clearer, as we can now relate all environmental aspects to carbon emissions. It also makes it easier to communicate with our customers, as much of the environmental debate in society today is linked to carbon emissions.

4) How will you use the results to drive sustainability work in the future?
We will gradually improve the quality of the input data and also add new input data. This will make our calculations more precise. In terms of marketing, we will talk to customers who have ambitions for their sustainability work. In principle, we can already calculate our climate impact per square meter of installed floor, which customers should be interested to know. The next step will be to add up the climate impact of different flooring materials, also broken down by square meter and project. In this way, we can help our customers to really make informed, calculated and climate-smart decisions that include both installation and materials. They can't get that help today from anyone.