For many years, sustainability has been a topic on humanity’s agenda, but it has come to the forefront in our time due to environmental, social, and economic crises. In simple terms, sustainability is a way of life based on meeting today’s needs without depleting the resources we leave for future generations and without infringing on their rights.

Starting from 2022, TORA decided to offer the concept of sustainability, which it has embraced in many aspects, as a professional service under the ecotora brand, in conjunction with the services of the Environmental Department. We will read the details of this new process from the pen of Serkan İktü, who is at the forefront of the processes.

As the TORA Environmental Services Department, we have been providing services for years in areas such as identifying and improving contaminated sites, waste management, designing, manufacturing, and supplying equipment according to sectoral needs. In both service and manufacturing and sales processes, we tried to consider the concepts of net zero and sustainability in order to ensure departmental development and increase the quality of the work performed.

Transparency in Sustainable Site Improvement Activities

Our first step in adapting the concept of sustainability to processes was a soil and groundwater improvement project that lasted for over a year in a facility located within the boundaries of Istanbul. Within this scope, we worked on the ISO 18504 Soil Quality and Sustainable Improvement standard and applied the relevant standard requirements in field work. In this standard, during field work, the social impacts arising from the improvement system and operation, environmental footprint, and hotspots in life cycle analysis are determined. Social impacts and environmental footprint values of the project are minimized according to the identified hotspots.

In accordance with the standard, we carried out meticulous work on many aspects, from the methods of improvement used in the field to the reuse of equipment, to the route of the vehicles we used for transportation, and the disposal of waste from the site with the lowest environmental impact. In compliance with the legislation, we submitted the ISO 18504 Assessment Report to the Provincial Directorate of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change along with the reports required by the legislation in 2020.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyzes the potential environmental impacts of services or products throughout their life cycles.

By identifying sectoral needs, TORA aims to introduce LCA as the most rational way to achieve profit while producing its own products and services, and the products and services of its business partners. Unlike green certification systems, LCA directly identifies the hotspots in producers’ processes, allowing them to discover how and when to take precautions at an early stage. This way, both nature and the operator benefit.

Life Cycle Assessment simplifies the process of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD).

One of the services we started to offer under the ECOTORA brand is the preparation of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). EPDs are declarations of the performance of a product or service in terms of various environmental parameters throughout its life cycle, as defined by ISO 14025. EPD documents quantitatively assess and declare the environmental performance of the product based on predetermined parameters (raw materials, energy consumption, etc.) within the framework of ISO 14040 standards.

Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) are documents that reveal the environmental data derived from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies and other related information, making LCA an important part of environmental product declarations.

Producers gain export advantages with environmentally labeled products.

As it is known, in 2020, Turkey became a member of the Global Ecolabelling Network, an international platform established to support, develop, and promote eco-labeled products/services. In this way, Turkish industrialists can promote their environmentally labeled products in the international market and gain advantages in exports.

Sustainability essentially aims for minimal waste and maximum efficiency.

With our Net Zero approach, we offer models to our business partners in water, waste, and energy management, enabling them to create an economy of minimum waste, maximum efficiency, and high satisfaction.

Last year, World Overshoot Day was determined to be July 29. This means that humans had to consume the resources of the following year in the remaining 5 months of the year. Despite the burden of all this pollution, our planet is trying to provide us with new resources. As EKOTORA, we gave a hand to nature.

“Sustainability is a way of life.” With the slogan, our goal on this journey is to create an infrastructure that will allow our business partners to use their resources efficiently, live in harmony with nature, direct their investments and technological developments correctly, and maintain the potential to meet human needs both today and in the future.