The LEDVANCE timeline of sustainability | LEDVANCE

Not just a once-a-year-thing: A journey through the LEDVANCE timeline of sustainability

At LEDVANCE, tradition meets innovation. Throughout the history of our company, a common thread has always been that we strive to combine our traditional general illumination expertise with modern, sustainable lighting technologies.
For us, sustainability is not just a word or a short-term measure – sustainability is deeply ingrained in our company's story. Let's explore what we've accomplished so far and what lies ahead in this captivating timeline of LEDVANCE's sustainability efforts.

1919: The year everything started

Today, LEDVANCE is one of the world‘s leaders in general lighting for lighting professionals as well as end users. But our history started more than 100 years ago – with the foundation of OSRAM. How LEDVANCE and OSRAM are related? You'll find out in a minute.

2008: First steps towards sustainability

Making lighting solutions energy-efficient, long-lasting, durable, closing the material loop by establishing take-back schemes always been part of OSRAMs agenda. In 2008, the company began to consolidate these activities – all under the heading of sustainability. By chairing working groups and joining global industry associations, where OSRAM worked together with government, industry and other stakeholders, the company has been able to drive for sustainability ever since then.

2016: Happy Birthday, LEDVANCE

In 2016, LEDVANCE emerged as an independent company with a distinct brand and identity, separating from the general lighting business of OSRAM. Now owned by Chinese lighting company MLS Co., LTD, LEDVANCE embarked on a new phase of its sustainability journey.

2017: LEDVANCE joins United Nations Global Compact

The United Nations Global Compact is the world's largest and most important initiative for sustainable and responsible corporate governance.
In 2017, we took another significant step to deeply integrate sustainability into our business: By signing the UN Global Compact (UNGC), we made an explicit public commitment to the protection of human rights in our area of responsibility. This commitment applies worldwide and includes both our employees and all companies with which we do business, especially our supply chain. By developing modern LED lighting products that are energy-saving and long-lasting, we want to contribute to the protection of our planet.

2018: “LEDification” starts now

Immediately afterward, we started to turn these promises into reality.
First, we placed even more focus on modern and sustainable LED lighting solutions and began to use the LEDVANCE brand for professional LED luminaires.
Secondly, we wanted to ensure more transparency and started to disclose information to CDP. CDP is a non-profit organisation that operates the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions to manage their environmental impact. LEDVANCE has participated in CDP since 2018 and discloses its data, including reporting on our CO2 emissions and accounting for our direct operations in China, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and the United States. In 2022, we achieved a C for our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reporting, including all our operations worldwide.

2019 to 2021: New challenges, new lighting solutions

For LEDVANCE, the years from 2019 to 2021 were marked by the development of new, sustainable lighting solutions – not least to meet new challenges such a global pandemic.
We launched our UV-C portfolio to support the containment of coronavirus – lighting solutions which are able to destroy viruses and bacteria and thereby create a cleaner and safer world.
But our efforts didn’t stop there. We continued to put people in the spotlight by further developing our solutions in the area of Human Centric Lighting (HCL); lighting solutions which consider visual, emotional and biological factors and thus contribute to health and well-being. Today, we offer a range of HCL products catering for both residential and professional customers - and we have also been awarded for it.
As well as becoming the first company to receive the VDE quality certificate for our BIOLUX Control Unit, we also won the German Innovation Award 2020 in the B2B ‘Lighting Solutions’ category for the system.

2022: Our first sustainability report – and so much more

In 2022, our long-standing efforts in the field of sustainability paid off and so much has happened that we can only mention the most important developments here. Enough preamble – this is what 2022 was all about:

This year, we took further steps in “LEDifying” our business by converting our entire portfolio to LED products. Our commitment to sustainability, innovation and efficiency enabled us to generate up to 70 percent of our turnover with advanced LED and luminaires in 2022. We continued this development by presenting the next evolutionary stage of LED technology – our EVERLOOP system. With EVERLOOP, we are the first major manufacturer in the world to offer luminaires with replaceable drivers and LED modules. The modular design also allows sensors and other components to be retrofitted.

2022 was also the year we joined the SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative) along with more than 4,000 businesses around the world. The SBTi is a global body enabling businesses to set ambitious emissions reduction targets in line with the latest climate science. It is focused on accelerating companies across the world to halve emissions before 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions before 2050. The SBTi provides a clearly defined path to reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals, among others, for businesses in the consumer durables, household, and personal products sectors.

Moreover, we have developed action plans based on the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), which we also joined as a partner member in 2022, to tackle potential issues regarding the sourcing of finished products containing conflict minerals.
We also got recognised for our efforts: LEDVANCE was awarded an EcoVadis silver medal for our achievements in Corporate Social Responsibility in the areas of environmental efforts, ethics, labour and human rights, and sustainable procurement. EcoVadis is one of the world’s largest and most trusted providers of business sustainability ratings.

Many big achievements, but there's one that we haven't mentioned yet. We are particularly proud that we were able to publish our first sustainability report of 2022 in 2023! Download our report here and find out even more about our green agenda.

2023: New partners, new initiatives

In 2023, we forged new alliances and partnered with Bayer 04 Leverkusen. As official sustainability partner of the “Werkself”, which includes fitting out all buildings with environmentally friendly LED technology. In addition, there will be a broad sustainability campaign for the whole Bayer 04 family – involving the senior squad, fans, Women’s, and Youth teams as well as all employees.
Also, we announced our participation in the Clean Energy Ministerial Global Lighting Challenge (GLC) with a commitment to selling 2.5 billion energy efficient LED Lamps by 2023.

The future is green

Future measures are already being implemented. Our vision is to make sustainability a key principle in all our corporate decisions. We aim to develop targets and a roadmap to reach net-zero operations by establishing company-wide, science-based targets and by setting up company-wide GHG (Greenhouse Gas Protocol) accounting and monitoring. Furthermore, we are building up a comprehensive management approach to identify, monitor, and reduce environmental and human rights impacts along the supply chain and in our own operations, with the goal of minimizing risks and maximizing positive impact.
And what comes next? Well, we don't know exactly what the future will bring, but we know for sure that sustainability is not just a one-year thing to us. We are confident that we will be able to tackle future challenges – with determination, with persistence, with innovative ideas and all together with you.