Corporate Social Responsibility

As an international company we want to accept responsibility for everyone who participates in our success. This is why we are making constant efforts to improve the working conditions in our supply chain and minimise our environmental impact.

Our purchase departments in Germany, Poland and China, along with our designers and trend scouts plan collections which are ordered at our manufacturers or purchased directly from our suppliers in Europe, Asia and North Africa. We do not have our own production plants, so we sensitise our suppliers and manufacturers to environmental and social policy issues in order to gain their support for our joint pro-environmental actions.

We expect our manufacturers and suppliers to operate according to the code of conduct we have prepared. This code of conduct is based on the UNDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and on documents of the ILO (International Labour Organisation). To guarantee observance of this code we order authorised controlling institutions to perform regular audits.

Striving to improve working conditions, we support our suppliers and manufacturers in the introduction of the Corporate Social Responsibility system based on the standard ISO SA 8000:2001. In the production process we prefer those suppliers and manufacturers who are certified with "Öko-Tex Standard 100"*. This standard concerns all stages of the production of merchandise, including textiles and non-textile items.

The constant supervision of our supply chain allows us to optimally transport goods. The standard means of transport is a vessel for long distances and a van for shorter ones, because they generate only small quantities of carbon dioxide. Air transport is not one of our standard procedures.

After the goods reach their destination, their quality is randomly checked and then they are sorted and sent to our shops by vans. Packages generated in the process are regularly disposed of. Furthermore, we support all pro-environmental initiatives of our employees or campaigns aimed at reducing power consumption, such as the introduction of a recycling system at our headquarters, using environment-friendly paper or low-energy light bulbs in our shops. Moreover, we rely on an ORSAY-specific carbon dioxide emission balance in order to monitor our internal development according to the Kyoto Protocol, which means the acceleration of the annual reduction of our carbon dioxide emissions.
 
Our customers and employees are welcome to submit questions about the corporate social responsibility as well as proposals and ideas to: CSR@orsay.de.
 
 
* This is a controlling and certification system for textiles, organised by the International Organisation for Environmental Development and Research on Textiles (Oeko-Tex Association). Oeko-Tex Standard 100 guarantees therefore that textiles are impeccable as far as health safety is concerned and they respect the limit values of particular chemicals which are harmful to human health.