Our material issues are those that matter most to our stakeholders and broader shareholder groups, and subsequently impact the Company’s value drivers, competitive position and long-term value creation.
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Our material issues are those that matter most to our stakeholders and broader shareholder groups, and subsequently impact the Company’s value drivers, competitive position and long-term value creation.
We assess our material issues annually to fully understand how to manage the risks and opportunities they present. This ensures that we prioritise the issues that have the greatest impact on the economy, society and the environment.
Our annual materiality assessment, is carried out in four phases by our cross-functional Mission 2025 Team:
The steps to ensure that management of material issues is successfully embedded in our strategy and operations are carried out by three groups within the Company.
To support our annual materiality assessment, we conduct an ongoing dialogue with our stakeholders, including employees, consumers, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, non-governmental organisations, investors, trade associations and academics. In addition, we monitor external trends, other industries and peer company’s materiality analysis and how these affect our ability to grow our business sustainably over time.
Our systematic materiality assessment process helps us prioritise the issues in line with the GRI Standards. The issues are interconnected and should not be viewed as separate items.
Understanding the needs and interests of our stakeholders – including our partners, customers, suppliers and community members and employees – helps us to prioritise our material issues. This in turn helps us develop sustainable business strategies, enabling us to create value in the long term.
We actively seek out our stakeholders’ opinions and insights by:
The outcome of our material issues survey constitutes a ranking order of material issues. By assessing the importance of these issues to our stakeholders and their decision, combined with an assessment of the impact of the issue on society and environment, we derive the relative materiality of each issue and prioritise them accordingly. Following the process of prioritising our material issues, the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) ensures their proper implementation in our overall strategic framework. This includes setting and disclosing targets and metrics to measure progress.
We have linked our material issues to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), established by the UN to achieve long-term growth and development by 2030. In 2018, when introducing Mission 2025 with our sustainability commitments, we aligned our materiality topics not only with the applicable goals, but with all relevant underlying targets for each SDG.
Our material issues are linked to the Mission 2025 sustainability commitments and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and their targets
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments*
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Alignment with SDGs
2025 sustainability commitments
Natural Capital is the stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people (reference: Natural Capital Coalition).
To understand our impact, we used the methodology of the Natural Capital Protocol, and evaluated our environmental impact across our entire value chain.
Our study translates Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) indicators into a monetary value.
Final impact is the cost that society bears as a result of our activities in the value chain.
No. |
Indicator | Units of Measure |
Short Description |
1 |
Aquatic ecotoxicity | EUR/kg TEG | The valuation factor is based on aquatic ecotoxicity's contribution to a loss of biodiversity measured in potentially disappeared fraction of species (PDF) over a certain area over a certain time (PDF.m2.yr). The IMPACT2002+ method is used to convert from TEG to PDF. |
2 |
Aquatic eutrophication | EUR/kg PO4 eq. | The valuation factor is based on aquatic eutrophication's contribution to a loss of biodiversity measured in potentially disappeared fraction of species (PDF) over a certain area over a certain time (PDF.m2.yr). The IMPACT2002+ method is used to convert from PO4 to PDF. |
3 |
Climate change/Global warming | EUR/kg CO2-eq | The valuation factor is based on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), which assess the future economic costs linked to climate change. |
4 |
Non-renewable energy | EUR/MJ | The valuation factor is assessing how much economic costs the society pays when non-renewable resources are depleted. The fact that they are not renewable and that they become scarcer represents a loss of value for the society. This specific estimate quantifies the marginal cost increase of oil production due to its increase scarcity at long term. |
5 |
Carcinogens | EUR/kg C2H3Cl-eq | The emission of toxic substances affects ecosystems and humans. The base method to assess both those impact is the same and is derived from the Life Cycle Impact Assessment method called Impact2002+. This method allow to quantify this impact both on humans' health and ecosystems per pollutant, covering more than 10'000 different ones. For human health, the impact is measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY, a common unit of human health introduced by the World Health Organisation) and then translated into monetary value using the value of life, which has been estimated using the productive value of life (i.e., this is a low estimate compared to other methods such as the statistical value of life, SVL). This DALY value is equivalent to the global GDP per capita provided by the World Bank. The valuation factors shown is for the reference pollutant that is considered for both indicators. All pollutant toxicity and impact is compared to this reference substance to be able to express each pollutant contribution to the final impact in the same unit. |
6 |
Non-carcinogens | EUR/kg C2H3Cl-eq | |
7 |
Ionizing radiation | EUR/BqC-14-eq | Ionizing radiation measured the health impact of the emission of radionuclides that can cause damage to the DNA. Measured in Becquerel (BqC-14-eq), it is based on the IMPACT2002+ method and translated into DALY which are valued according to the description included in the human toxicity indicator. |
8 |
Ozone layer depletion | EUR/kg CFC-11-eq | Ozone layer depletion measures the human health impact of increased UV-B radiation that occurs as a result of ozone layer destruction. It is based on the IMPACT2002+ method translated into DALY which are valued according to the description included in the human toxicity indicator. |
9 |
Photochemical oxidation | EUR/kg C2H4-eq | Photochemical oxidation measures the health impacts of smog due to the emission of Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOC), based on the IMPACT2002+ method and translated it into DALY which are valued according to the description included in the human toxicity indicator. |
10 |
Respiratory effects | EUR/kg PM2.5 | This cost represents the health damage that emission of fine particulates creates for humans. It is based on a range of studies linking air quality to health damage costs measured in DALY. The valuation is based on the valuation of DALY as described in the human toxicity indicator description. |
11 |
Land occupation | EUR/m2a | Land use is associated to the following ecosystem services: biotic production (fertility), carbon storage, erosion control, water filtration and groundwater recharge potential. The changes of ecosystem services is measured using international databases and published scientific literature. The change is measured between the natural state of the land and the occupation type (agriculture, commercial forest, building, etc.). Data is available at country level and for key biomes, which allows for a partial regionalization of the valuation factors. The valuation technique uses the damage or replacement cost approach (how much does it cost to replace the ecosystem service, or how much does the loss of ecosystem service cost for society). |
12 |
Water consumption | EUR/m3 | The cost of water depletion is calculated using the valuation tool of the Natural Capital Finance Alliance. It is a regionalized dataset of costs which are calculating accounting for the scarcity level of each location and the related potential damage costs that this water scarcity creates. |