Environmental
policy
Adapting for a sustainable creative future
From Frédéric Brun,
co-founder and CEO
As a manufacturer of musical instruments and audio equipment, we use electronic components, printed circuit boards, metal, wood, plastic, cardboard boxes… all of which bear significant impact on our planet.
In addition, we sell our products in over 80 countries, involving all sorts of logistics and distances; this, without a doubt, produces carbon emissions. As an ever-expanding team of professionals, we commute to our offices, we use computers and paper, we maintain servers and use online services extensively; all of this also contributes to our carbon footprint.
So, what can we
do about it?
In 2020, we started working with independent consulting firm UTOPIES, who measured every aspect of our carbon footprint, from the earliest stages of product design to the electricity consumption of our marketing and logistics. These benchmarks were then transformed into meaningful, realistic action points that we could take, which you will see detailed further down on this page.
As of 2023, many of our flagship products are made with a minimum of 40% recycled plastic; our latest generation of KeyLab Essential controllers use PCBs that are 18% smaller; our packaging is made with 100% recyclable materials; and we now offer a 5-year warranty on some of our hardware. This is just a handful of actions taken, and the list continues to grow.
Recently, we expanded our measurement to include more thorough data across every stage of our product life cycle. As a result, our total carbon footprint for 2023–24 stands at 18,333 tCO₂e, reflecting both our broader scope of measurement and our business growth.
We are not happy with this result, it does not reflect our efforts. Still things are the way they are. The new measure is 1/ more accurate and 2/ the fact that our Hardware sales grew in proportion to our Software sales has had an impact on our ecological performance last year.
Eventually, being clear on the situation and taking everything into account is precisely why we measure: so we can continue to focus on reducing our impact - whether that means designing products more efficiently, streamlining our supply chain, or encouraging low-carbon habits in our own offices.
All of this is not easy, frankly speaking, but it’s certainly necessary. We will continue to have an impact on our planet, just like many human activities do. But we’d like, as we grow, to reduce this impact to the minimum. So that we can be proud of our work, not only when we see our instruments on stage or receive positive emails at the support desk, but also when we look back and consider the overall picture.
_Frédéric BrunWhere our carbon
comes from
The first step on our climate journey was to understand our impact. In 2020, we reached out to UTOPIES, the leading independent sustainability consulting firm in France who specialize in calculating carbon footprints.
Every year, they explain how our carbon impact is spread across both direct and indirect emissions, covering the following three scopes:
- Scope 1 - Emissions made directly by a company, like vehicle operation and business facilities.
- Scope 2 - Indirect emissions from energy purchased for company usage.
- Scope 3 - Emissions indirectly caused by every other aspect of the company’s output: distribution, employee commuting, waste disposal, and everything in between.
Today, Arturia's total carbon footprint is: 18,333 tCO₂e
Over 99% of those emissions fall under Scope 3, consistent with previous years.
If you’d like to dig deeper, you can explore our detailed Carbon Footprint and Climate Strategy Evaluation Documents from past years:
Carbon footprint and climate strategy evaluation documents:
How we’re reducing
our emissions
Implementing an effective strategy involves every team, every distributor, and every manufacturing partner to establish not just long-term goals, but the daily actions that can be taken to make the difference that’s needed.
While UTOPIES gathered the hard evidence needed, we turned to our own employees and user community to hear what they had to say. These are the people on the frontline, both in terms of creating our products and exploring sound with them out in the wild.
Our action points for reducing our carbon footprint can be summarized into three main areas of focus:
Our products
Because raw materials still account for the largest share of our footprint (around 71%), it’s no surprise that a big part of our action plan focuses on rethinking our designs.
We’re also looking carefully at the manufacturing process - which is about 5% - and engaging with suppliers to reduce emissions throughout the supply chain.
- Embed eco-design thinking in R&D and product management teams
- Use recycled and low carbon materials in our products and packaging
01.Eco-design our products to lower their carbon intensity
- Standardise mechanical design in order to reuse the tooling
02.Reuse production tooling
- Collaborate with our suppliers to help them reduce their emissions, for example by reducing their packaging
03.Engage our suppliers in a low carbon approach
Our management
Leading by example means challenging our everyday habits too. We’re finding ways to make our offices more sustainable, as well as how our employees commute to them.
- Reduce water and electricity consumption
- Implement a selective waste-sorting system
- Company mobility plan:
- We are supporting commuting by bike by paying €0.25/km (up to €200/year)
- We reimburse 50% of our employees’ public transport passes
04.Implement an internal energy saving policy
Our clients
Finally, we’re involving our customers. You didn’t honestly think we’d forget you, did you?
- Reduce emissive transport and relocate logistic centres as close as possible to our customers
05.Limit carbon intensive modes of transport for distributing our products to customers
- Develop less carbon intensive goodies
- Publish an annual carbon footprint report and action plan
06.Set up a low carbon approach for our marketing communications
- Establish partnerships for the collection and recycling of our products
07.Collect and recycle Arturia products at the end of their life
Let's have fun
and explore sound sustainably
As we continue pushing to offer our users a more sustainable experience, we’ll keep you informed on our annual targets, changes we’ve made, and successes along the way. We hope this inspires you to join us on a journey towards sustainable sound exploration - we couldn’t do it without you.