SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability and KORTEKS
KORTEKS’s actions are informed by its awareness of the need to pass on a habitable world in which future generations may live and prosper. Out of this awareness, the company gives great importance to environmental sustainability.
KORTEKS also acknowledges that sustainability is a business strategy that supports its corporate priorities and is crucially important to its ability to achieve its future objectives.
KORTEKS takes an integrated approach to economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
Seeking to achieve economic growth that is simultaneously productive, profitable, and sustainable, KORTEKS is therefore mindful of social and environmental sustainability in the conduct of its operations as well.
Besides the issues of passing scarce resources on to future generations and of safeguarding global sustainability, climate change also poses a serious threat to the world today. There can no longer be any doubt but that human activity–especially industrial activity–is a major contributor to global climate change. Furthermore human population growth and urbanization are driving climate change just as much as do the unconscientious consumption of resources in industry and the increase in carbon emissions it leads to.
It is in this general context and in light of scientific findings that KORTEKS believes that both individuals and the organizations that they make up have important responsibilities for the sake of a sustainable world and its activities and operations are informed by this belief.
KORTEKS’s approach to sustainability
Aware that respect for the environment as well as for people is essential to sustainable development, KORTEKS strives to ensure the sustainability of all of its business and other processes accordingly. This is the KORTEKS approach to sustainability and the company incorporates it into everything that it does.
KORTEKS believes that it is necessary to engage in long-term collaborations with all of its stakeholders in order to ensure the viability and sustainability of its growth and success as a business enterprise. In keeping with its own responsible approach to business conduct, the company strives with all of its might to fulfill the duties incumbent upon it with respect to energy and natural resources and the protection of habitats.
Guided by Zorlu Holding, its parent company, KORTEKS is mindful of communal values. It therefore takes pains to make the most productive use of natural resources and to adhere to Zorlu Holding standards in the profitability, customer satisfaction & loyalty, and employee participation projects that it undertakes to ensure the sustainability of its growth and development.
Reports
| Sustainability Report 2022 | 25.05.2022 | Download PDF | |
| Sustainability Report 2021 | 17.03.2021 | Download PDF |
Global Compact
In all areas in which it is active, a fundamental Zorlu Holding objective is to raise the standards by which everyone’s performance on issues involving human rights, labor conditions, the environment, and ethics are judged in Turkey. Making most efficient use of resources in the conduct of our production operations and designing every step we take with the future in mind are foremost among the issues that shape all of our decision-making processes. As Zorlu Holding, we take a corporate-sustainability approach in the management of all economic, social, environmental, and ethical issues. We are aware that resources are not unlimited and for that reason we conduct our operations by abiding strictly with our code of ethics in order to improve the quality of people’s lives and to protect the balance between resource use and wildlife conservation as much as possible. These values have always been the essential touchstones of our business ethics and the foundations on which we have been building our success for over half a century. The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), to which we have subscribed as evidence of our commitment to our objectives, contributes significantly towards institutionalizing this approach throughout our organization. Launched in 2000, UNGC sets out ten principles in the areas of human rights, the environment, labor standards, and anti-corruption to which an ever greater number of signatories have been committing themselves ever since. These principles provide signatories with guidance in making decisions that will improve their performance on a wide range of issues such as managing risk, increasing productivity, motivating employees and enhancing their loyalty, and entering new markets and business lines.
OEKO-TEX®
KORTEKS improves the quality of consumers’ lives with products whose OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 Class 1 certification provides assurance that they have been tested to determine the presence of substances known to be harmful to human health. Internationally-recognized OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 Class 1 certification is only awarded to textile products that have been independently tested and demonstrated not to be harmful to human health. Seeking to eliminate the detrimental effect that chemicals used in textiles may have on people’s health and conducting its manufacturing operations accordingly, KORTEKS joined this testing and certification system. Mindful both of the quality and the safety of its products and concerned for human health and well-being, KORTEKS has all of the raw materials used in its textile manufacturing processes as well as its intermediary and finished products tested not only for the presence of illegal substances but also for their compliance with standards and limits prescribed for those substances that are known to be harmful. Because it certifies that goods are suitable for use by babies, KORTEKS’s OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 Class 1 products are the safest available on the market.
Sustainability at all stages of a product’s life cycle
In line with its overall concept of sustainability, KORTEKS pays attention to the environmental impact of its products at every stage of their life cycle and does everything necessary to minimize it. As one of the largest integrated polyester yarn production centers in Europe, we dream of a sustainable world and strive to provide a better future based on innovative and technological developments in line with Zorlu Holding's "Smart Life 2030" vision. In our polymer recycling plant, we produce r- PET Chips by processing post-industrial fiber waste and post-consumer PET bottles, which can remain in nature for many years and have a negative impact on the environment. Thanks to this innovative recycling process, we not only save energy, but also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as it requires less energy compared to conventional production processes. We are pleased to publish the first EPD documents in the polyester yarn industry by finalizing the life cycle assessments of the process we have conducted for sustainability. You can access our EPD documents through the links below.
| EPD Documents | Environdec Links | |
| Korteks TAÇ Yarn (Virgin) | https://epdturkey.org/tr/service/detail/s-p-04106 | |
| Korteks TAÇ Reborn (from %100 Re-PES) (Post-industrial) | https://epdturkey.org/tr/service/detail/s-p-04107 | |
| Korteks TAÇ Reborn (from %100 Re-PET) (Post-consumer) | https://epdturkey.org/tr/service/detail/s-p-04108 | |
| Korteks TAÇ Reborn (from %50 Re-PET, %50 Re-PES) (Hybrid) | https://epdturkey.org/tr/service/detail/s-p-04109 |