“Nick and Kate were great to work on this project. They helped guide us through a very complex process and make everything seem easy. I couldn't have done this without their support.”
– CYNTHIA TANG, GENERAL MANAGER MARKETING, TECHNOLOGY & IMPACT, JACOBSEN
Jacobsen has been bringing world-class flooring to New Zealand for over 60 years. Built on family values, technical expertise, and long-standing relationships, it’s a business that has earned its reputation the old-fashioned way — and one that clearly takes its responsibilities seriously.
We have worked with Jacobsen to produce three sustainability reports prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards, one of the most widely recognised reporting frameworks globally. Each reporting cycle has involved genuine stakeholder engagement and a materiality assessment process, ensuring their reports reflect what actually matters to the people connected to their business rather than just what’s easy to measure and communicate. That kind of rigour takes commitment, and the fact that Jacobsen has done it three times speaks to a business that views reporting as a tool for improvement rather than a compliance exercise.
A highlight of their sustainability journey has been the development of a product stewardship programme for select flooring products. Rather than those products ending up in landfill at the end of their life, Jacobsen takes them back and returns them to the manufacturer to be recycled into new flooring. It’s a genuinely circular outcome, one that closes the loop on a product category not typically associated with end-of-life thinking, and one that reflects the kind of values-to-action alignment that separates meaningful sustainability from the performative kind.
For a business that curates products from around the world, taking responsibility for what happens to those products at the end of their life is no small thing.
We speak to Jacobsen in our ‘Progress in Practice‘ podcast.
Every year, thousands of square metres of flooring are ripped up from offices, hospitals, schools and commercial buildings across New Zealand — and the vast majority of it ends up in landfill. It’s a quiet but significant waste problem that most people in the construction and fitout industry simply accept as the cost of doing business.
Jacobsen didn’t accept it.
In this episode of Progress in Practice, host Nick Morrison speaks with Cynthia Tang, General Manager of Marketing, Technology and Impact at Jacobsen, about Re.form — the company’s product stewardship and takeback program that has been running since 2020. Re.form collects discarded vinyl, carpet tile and rubber flooring from Jacobsen customers and sends it back through the supply chain to manufacturing and recycling partners in Europe, where it is processed back into new flooring products. It is a genuine closed loop recycling solution — and one of the most ambitious sustainability initiatives being run by a New Zealand flooring business today.
Listen to the episode:
If you’re a retailer or distributor looking to develop your sustainability reporting or build product stewardship thinking into your model, we’d love to hear from you.