For us, sustainable development begins with the pleasure we take in working in this remarkable place. When one has the good fortune to grow and develop in surroundings of such quality, one naturally wants to protect them.

In the Seventies, when the ecological movement took off in France, the Roset Company was already practising an ecology of simple common sense.

The risk of causing harm to these surroundings which are so dear to us could have grown along with the Roset Company itself. However, our activities are actually having less and less of an effect on those surroundings. This can be explained by our vigilance and the demands we make both of ourselves and of our suppliers. Our attention is attracted by any reliable solution which guarantees enhanced protection for man along with improved management of natural resources, even if it might entail extra costs in the short term.

We are continually on the lookout for products which combine performance with non-toxicity, ‘cleaner’ solutions which fit with our eco-citizen credentials. This is how we have managed to stay ahead of legislation designed to protect both our personnel and the environment.

Much more than just a strategy, our philosophy is imbued with respect for human beings and their environment, affecting not only the training of our workforce but also our choice of suppliers and the management of our waste.

Our environmental policy is nourished by the concepts which have guided us from the very beginning: creativity, innovation, quality.

As a result of their ‘clean’ manufacturing process, our furniture and seating generates no toxic discharges in the home of the consumer. We use only materials and products which are recommended by the FCBA (Forêts, Cellulose, Bois et Ameublement) and which comply with European standards.

We can therefore guarantee that our furniture and seating pose no threat either to health or to the environment.

Eco-design (or in French, l’éco-conception) aims to put environmental criteria on the same footing as technical and economic criteria, right from the initial design stages. This means:

identifying the environmental issues associated with the product for the entire duration of its life cycle.
limiting the environmental impact of the product’s manufacturing process to the very maximum possible.
designing the product in a way which enables its component materials to be recycled as far as possible.
We design products whose constituent parts are increasingly separable. This is achieved through carefully selecting and limiting the number of materials used, research into products (e.g. easily removable glues) and making products as light as possible. For example, when designing furniture we make thick panels alveolar in construction, with cardboard honeycombing at the core.

Our products contain solid wood. Despite this, we play no part in the destruction of the South American (mainly the Amazon), African and South Asian forests. Very conscious of the urgent need to protect this natural heritage, we exclusively use PEFC-certified wood, that is, European wood species such as oak, walnut, ash and beech from eco-managed forests.

Thanks to its environmentally-friendly policies and constant anticipation of potential problems, our Company’s activities have no impact on its environment. Sources of waste are reduced as far as possible, with all waste being either recycled or reused.

The Saint Jean le Vieux site (Cabinet department) is equipped with a huge wood-fired furnace which uses our wood offcuts to heat the 45,000m2 factory space. Our fuel consumption is therefore almost nil. Emissions from this furnace are of course monitored annually in order to ensure that they are lower than the required standard. The ash is also analysed.

The methods employed on our production sites (staff training, sprinkler installation, etc.), put in place after consultation with our insurance companies and the fire brigade, mean that we are deservedly considered by insurers as very good ‘students’ in the matter of fire prevention and protection. Everything possible is done to avoid catastrophe, not only in human and financial terms but also ecologically speaking, since the choice of construction materials (most notably structures made from glued wooden laminates) protects the business from complete destruction.

The water for the sprinklers, which would be polluted in the case of a fire, is drawn from a dedicated independent source and collected in special tanks before being analysed and treated.

This is a priority and a driving force for our training programs and for the constant improvements which we make to our sites. A few years ago, we improved the way in which wood dust is removed from our factories, bringing the level of dust emissions down to 0.2mg/m3; by comparison the limit imposed by European legislation was 5mg/m3. Today, the official limit is 1mg/m3 and we are still well within that. Control measures are implemented regularly in order to guarantee continued safety.

With regard to noise emanating from our site, we comply 100% with current standards. That said, additional corrective measures have been put in place – such as acoustic covers for machinery and more effective individual ear protectors.