Sustainability

Our responsibility to our environment

Companies today are engaged in a constant balancing act of ensuring fair conditions for their employees, their customers, their producers and the environment. The latter often ends up with the worst deal, as environmental protection and sustainable materials are often expensive. As a family-run company from the German Black Forest, we have been producing high-quality, long-lasting products that are made in Germany since 1947. Our love for nature is as deeply rooted in us as our commitment to the welfare of future generations. So it was an easy decision for us to invest in sustainability and protecting our environment.

Here you can find the many small changes we have already made, as well as the big projects we have implemented – plus everything that is still in the planning stage.

1947

Formesse is founded in the Black Forest

Formesse starts out producing bed linen and other trousseau textiles. All made in Germany.

1985

Formesse fitted sheets conquer the market

Our hero product Jersella lays the foundation stone for exceptionally high-quality, long-lasting and thus sustainable fitted sheets. Bella Donna Jersey follows in 1992.

2006

In-house solar panel system

The roofs of our warehouse and a large open area at the company site are equipped with solar panels – covering a total area of 1,366m². Every year we feed approx. 240,000 kWh of electricity into the national grid. This is more than twice the amount of electricity we consume ourselves per annum at our site in Löffingen.

2012

Carbon-neutral parcel shipping

Our parcel shipper DPD offers carbon-neutral shipping and we are immediately on board. Every year we send over 100,000 carbon-neutral parcels to our specialist bed linen retailers via DPD. Moreover, DPD aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% per parcel by 2025.

2013

Environmental protection in office life

We switch to environmentally friendly cleaning agents and detergents, and introduce first measures to reduce our paper consumption.

2016

Paperless invoicing for our customers

Our customers can now receive an electronic invoice instead of a paper one. After some initial hesitation, approx. 99% of our customers opted for paperless invoices by 2021.

2017

Green electricity and local heat

We purchase NaturEnergie electricity from our local electricity provider and heat with local heat from the Löffingen municipal energy supplier.

2018

Cooperation with Southern Black Forest natural park

We seek professional advice and design our 2,500 m2 outdoor area, including our solar panel area, to be nature, insect and animal-friendly. Our large areas of lawn are turned into wildflower meadows, we create retreats for small animals, nesting and feeding places for birds, and we rewild our pond.

2019

Carbon-neutral summer blanket

January 2019

Our Bella Donna Summer Blanket is now produced and delivered in a carbon-neutral way by identifying the product’s carbon footprint across the entire production chain – from raw material to its ultimate disposal by the consumer.

2019

Global climate strike

September 2019

All Formesse employees who wish to participate in the global climate strike may do so as paid leave.

2019

100% FSC paper

September 2019

All our paper and print products are now made from FSC-certified paper.

Formesse ClimatePartner Aufforstung
2020

Carbon-neutral company, carbon-neutral products

January 2020

From today, we as a company and our entire product range are officially carbon neutral. In cooperation with ClimatePartner GmbH, we calculated our carbon emissions and offset them by supporting recognised climate protection projects. Our next goal is to reduce carbon emissions wherever possible.

2020

First investment in an electric vehicle

April 2020

We buy our first electric car. Which is naturally charged by green electricity.

2021

Planting of trees and hedges

March 2021

Our outdoor area becomes even more nature-friendly. We plant eight fruit trees, plant a flowering bed to attract pollinators and create two large areas for additional natural hedges.

2021

Switch to eco-friendly cleaning products

July 2021

We switch entirely to ecological and sustainable detergents and cleaning products.

2021

Global climate strike

September 2021

All Formesse employees who wish to participate in the global climate strike may again do so as paid leave.

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Our products and the environment

Strict environmental standards

We believe conscious consumption to be the answer to many of the challenges of our time. Which is why we are proud to produce our products in Germany in accordance with strict environmental standards. Products of such high quality, they can be used for years to come.

All our products comply with the European Chemicals Regulation REACH, and are certified according to OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100, 97.0.7666, Institut Hohenstein, www.oeko-tex.de

We use FSC-certified product inserts and are currently in the process of testing new packaging made from grass. Naturally, our product packaging is fully recyclable.

Carbon-neutral production

As a responsible company, we must also do our part in limiting global warming. We have therefore planned, initiated and already implemented a large number of measures to reduce our carbon emissions.

Our company and our products are now all carbon neutral. This means that Formesse offsets all (as yet) unavoidable emissions through support for certified climate protection projects.

Our carbon footprint has been calculated by ClimatePartner Deutschland GmbH.

Made in Germany

As a fully developed industrialised country, Germany has exacting social, industrial health and safety, and environmental standards. Many textile companies outsource their production to less developed countries in order to save money. We, however, believe these standards to be an important achievement. They drive us to better management and greater efficiency through use of the latest technologies. We cannot compete with low-cost manufacturers, that much is clear. But that is not our intention.

Slow

High-quality, long-lasting bedroom textiles – that’s what the Formesse brand is all about. We see our company philosophy confirmed in the SLOW movement: We support a more appreciative, decelerated consumption of high-quality products with a much longer lifespan. In other words: We make the opposite of fast fashion, which prioritises offering the latest, constantly changing fashion trends in mostly poor quality and at the lowest possible price. 

We offer you premium quality – Made in Germany – that stands the test of time. SLOW.

Our raw materials

Cotton

We source our high-quality cotton yarns from a small circle of selected German yarn dealers. We have been looking into organic cotton for many years, but still have a few hurdles to overcome. Our products require very high-quality, long-staple cotton and premium qualities of single and ply yarn. Unfortunately, the organic cotton market still struggles to guarantee a regular and reliable supply of these commodities. A fact that is reflected in price, because scarce commodities become expensive. In our case up to 15% more expensive. We are working at making our processes even more efficient and modern, which would allow us to absorb these additional costs. Our aim is to switch to using organic cotton in the medium term.

Tencel

We have been using Lenzing’s fantastic sustainable fibre TENCEL™ Lyocell in some of our products for many years now. Lyocell is derived from the renewable raw material wood and is fully biodegradable. In the particularly environmentally friendly Lyocell production process at Lenzing, the organic solvent NMMO is used to break down the wood pulp. And the recovery rate of this very valuable chemical with Lenzing technology is over 99%. Moreover, Lenzing only uses wood from sustainable forest management. We use Lyocell in our summer blankets and summer pillowcases, as well as in our Bella Donna Clima and Satinesse Air Silver protective covers.

Our company site in Löffingen

Environmental protection in the office

We make every effort to be as environmentally friendly and sustainable as possible in our daily office life. We always choose high-quality, sustainable products, which are ‘Made in Germany’ wherever possible. In 2006, we installed solar panels on our warehouse roofs and across a large open area of our site. Then in 2022, we added solar panels to our office building roof. In 2016, we introduced paperless invoicing. And since 2018, we have used ‘NaturEnergie’ electricity from our local electricity provider and we have heated with local heat from Stadtwerke Löffingen. Our company at our Löffingen site has been fully climate-neutral since 2021. Despite all these efforts, we are the first to admit that it’s not easy changing established habits. But we’re working on it – and getting better all the time!

Rewilded gardens

We support the ‘Blooming Natural Park Southern Black Forest’ project and have landscaped the green area around our company to be a flowering one that is insect and animal-friendly. We let natural hedges grow, provide natural shelters for small animals and hang nesting boxes for birds, and have established small ponds and streams. We also let our meadows flower naturally and support the growth of indigenous, insect-friendly plant species with site-specific seed mixtures.  

Social commitment from the Black Forest to Ghana

We donate to smaller and larger charity projects – both locally in the Black Forest and worldwide. These include regional projects such as the Lynx Initiative Baden-Württemberg e.V. and the Schlupfloch homeless shelter run by Caritas in Titisee-Neustadt, but also national and international organisations such as the German Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and World Hunger Aid.

We have supported the Baobab Children Foundation in Ghana since 2010. The foundation takes in street children and children of school age in Ghana, who are too poor to attend school. At Baobab, these young people learn to read and write, are taught mathematics and English, and are also equipped with practical vocational skills.

New material donations for innatura

We also donate fabrics and fitted sheets to welfare organisations. We regularly support the non-profit organisation innatura, which operates Germany’s first platform for distributing factory-new material donations to charitable organisations on a needs-oriented basis.

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