Environmental Responsibility

BOXMARK is committed to sustainable entrepreneurship with responsibility for future generations and works daily to avoid pollutant emissions as far as possible through production-integrated measures and to reduce unavoidable emissions to a minimum.

Since the majority of tanning processes take place in water-based baths, this element is a fundamental tool for tanneries. BOXMARK obtains the water needed for production from the nearby river Raab.

The water is not extracted from the river in the traditional sense, but only for a short time, used for the individual processes of leather production, cleaned in the company's own sewage treatment plants and returned to the river in better quality. This is therefore more of a water use than a water consumption.

BOXMARK operates state-of-the-art biological treatment plants for tannery wastewater at all leather production sites. All plants have a chemical-mechanical pre-treatment as well as a fully biological clarification of the wastewater with nitrogen and phosphate removal.

The respective plant sections are permanently monitored electronically. As a result of optimal design, professional handling and regulated control of all plants, a purification performance is achieved that is significantly above the required limit values. The technology for the so-called "tertiary cleaning stage" was developed in-house and is unique for tanneries.

Compliance with the limit values is checked daily in the in-house laboratory. In addition, the water quality is evaluated permanently and in real time in cooperation with the Institute for Water Quality at the Vienna University of Technology.

The implemented sludge dewatering system has considerably reduced the amount of sewage sludge. The possibility of chrome-free leather production, the associated absence of heavy metals in the sewage sludge, and its optimized conditioning allow composting of the sewage sludge produced during wastewater treatment.

The exhaust air from the wastewater treatment plants (sludge dewatering, sludge storage, pretreatment, wastewater collection shafts, etc.) and residual waste recycling is selectively extracted and cleaned using fully automated biofilter systems.