Vögeli AG has always played a pioneering role when it comes to the sustainability of print products. The family owned company with around 50 employees, based in Langnau im Emmental since 1911, began to rethink early on. Today, Vögeli AG produces printed products such as brochures, magazines or annual reports, but also packaging as the world’s first printing house with Cradle to Cradle Certified ™ GOLD status. In the supreme discipline of circular economy, the production processes are designed and the materials are chosen in such a way that waste does not arise in the first place, but everything used in production can be returned to nature as raw materials.
For Markus and Renato Vögeli, as for their ancestors, one principle was always important: The company should create value for customers, for employees and for the families of the employees. Every decision is made in such a way that additional values can arise and no values are destroyed. That is why the questions of environmental protection have always been present.
Vögeli has been printing and producing without the use of isopropyl alcohol for over 20 years. In addition, there is fossil-free heating, groundwater used for cooling, climate-neutral printing, a photovoltaic system and much more. In 2015, the energy efficiency was on such a high level already that even the energy experts at the Energy Agency from Swiss Private Sector (EnAW), after a thorough examination, were unable to recommend any useful additional measures to Vögeli.
At that time, Markus and Renato Vögeli questioned everything and began to “rethink” their products. What followed was nothing less than the most important change in the company by far: The decision to completely convert production to Cradle to Cradle®. The holistic approach according to Cradle to Cradle® not only provides for resource-saving, energy-neutral and even socially fair production. The goal is circularity without any loss of value.
Cradle to Cradle® is no further attempt to produce as little environmentally harmful as possible. Cradle to Cradle® is a completely new approach. With Cradle to Cradle® it must be guaranteed that the materials used are healthy and 100 percent biodegradable. Paints, paper or cardboard, varnishes and adhesives are optimized to be harmless to humans and the environment. This creates completely sustainable print products without any loss of value for the environment.
In 2019, Vögeli AG was the first printing company in the world to finally receive the Cradle to Cradle CertifiedTM GOLD status. As a consequence, in 2020, major Swiss media, Tages-Anzeiger and Der Bund, have given Vögeli great credit in their articles with the headline “The most sustainable printing company in the world”.
But Vögeli AG can do a lot more than just printing “clean”. With a variety of state-of-the-art printing technologies and cross-media offers in the field of digital marketing / campaigning, Vögeli AG today offers a comprehensive portfolio from analog to digital. And if fully sustainable and clean is not enough for you, you can go one step further with Vögeli, beyond 100 percent – and have your printed matter manufactured as newly developed, climate-positive products that contain flower seeds. The flower seed flyers or inlays can be given to Mother Nature as a whole, be it on the balcony, in the garden or on the traffic island in the middle of the city. Sustainable sustainability, so to speak, because the seeds become a species-rich flower meadow that has a positive effect on biodiversity and at the same time creates a “growing” carbon offset over several years. These new, climate-positive print products from Vögeli, give the much-quoted phrase “Think before you print” a whole new meaning.
