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Sustainability

Sustainability is an integral part of our purpose to Transform Tomorrow Together. It's our ambition to become a sustainability leader, working in partnership with our customers, suppliers and local communities to create a sustainable future.

We are committed to playing our part in looking after the environment and protecting it from significant issues such as climate change. We do this not only by improving the footprint of our own operations, such as reducing the emissions from our manufacturing facilities, but also by providing solutions to customers to help them manufacture more with less, and to deal with the shift to a more sustainable world.

Our commitment to Net Zero

In November 2021, we announced our Net Zero targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that we are actively contributing towards. This means (i) minimising our environmental impact, and (ii) working in partnership with our customers, suppliers and local communities to create positive change for people as well as the planet.

Developing our sustainability delivery plan

Sustainability

This year, our sustainability delivery plan has continued to evolve as we learn how to embed sustainability into our business. We have moved towards a business-function-led, and sustainability-team-supported approach. This means we are now focused on enabling business functions to own specific sustainability challenges they are uniquely placed to solve. To support this, we have changed our approach to sustainability governance, which you can see in more detail here.

Our intended targets are currently pending approval with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). These targets, all set against an FY2020 baseline, are:

  • achieve Net Zero in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2028;
  • achieve a 50% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030; and
  • achieve Net Zero across all scopes by 2050 at the latest.

To achieve our targets, we need to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 90% compared to our FY2020 baseline. We will also invest in credible carbon capture and removal programmes to address the remaining 10% of emissions.


UN Sustainable Development Goals

Reducing GHG emissions is just one part of a balanced sustainability delivery plan. That's why we've identified three UN SDGs most relevant to our business and where we can have the most impact. We have continued to work to support these goals.

Sustainable Development Goal 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
We are committed to doing business responsibly with various projects to support the achievement of this goal spread throughout the business. For instance, elements of UN SDG 8 cover equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), our education outreach and early careers programmes and enhancing our approach to mitigating modern slavery.

We also have the opportunity to provide technology that allows for inclusive employment by designing products that are equally easy to use regardless of characteristics such as gender, age and race. This year we created a ‘design for inclusivity' guide for our product designers, to ensure they design our products with equality in mind.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

In a world of increasingly scarce resources, we believe reducing waste through our own production processes and helping customers to manage their resources are the most effective actions we can take to support this goal.

Customers use our products to increase efficiency and accuracy which reduces their energy consumption and scrappage. We're also working on a series of projects to reduce waste and increase the amount of material we recycle in our own operations, as well as helping customers reduce their own waste.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 - Climate Action

UN SDG 13 covers educational goals aimed at ensuring people have access to the relevant information to raise awareness and drive sustainable development and lifestyle choices that are in harmony with nature. We are contributing to this through:

  • employee engagement sessions covering sustainability topics;
  • developing sustainability training programmes for our buyers;
  • reviewing how sustainability can be included in the core competencies and job architecture being developed by our HR colleagues; and
  • delivering our award-winning education outreach programme to local schools and colleges, which educates students on how we can achieve a sustainable planet together.

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