Our Approach
We are committed to working responsibly as part of a strategy to deliver value for all stakeholders. This means delivering value in a safe, secure and environmentally responsible manner for all our stakeholders.
Sustainable Life
During 2022, we launched our Sustainable Life project, our Group wide initiative to become a more trusted, responsible and sustainable business. Whilst we were already undertaking many initiatives separately around this Group, we have now united the Group efforts to co-ordinate this project on a Group wide basis.
We have built our own internal team for this project, led by one of our long-term employees Ennio Schiro, based in our Biokosmes facility. Ennio is an experienced member of our Quality Assurance team, and has a passion to continually improve the sustainability of our business. Ennio is supported by various members round the Group in building out and developing the initiatives across the business.
In 2022, we undertook stakeholder research to identify our 6 priority Sustainable Development Goals. Our Priority SDGs for our sustainable development:
Sustainable Development Goals
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, was adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, and provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future.
We believe the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) are a clear framework for creating an effective ESG strategy and our commitments will therefore be aligned against the relevant SDGs.
In common with the United Nations directives on sustainability, it is our target as a Group to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, and in 2023 we will be working to establish our carbon footprint and, in consultation with expert advisers, design our net zero plan, which will form the basis of our progression to net zero by 2030.
To date, we have already achieved some tremendous steps on this journey:
- A reduction of carbon emissions on transportation of product from the factory by 77% in 2022 compared to 2021, principally by significantly increasing the use of rail transport.
- A reduction of the amount of heating and power in Q3 2022 of 23% compared to the same period in 2021, through a reduction in factory temperature by 1 degree Celsius.
- 50% of staff in Italy registered on the Government sponsored Work Health promotion project.
Key activities during 2023 for the Sustainable Life team will be numerous. The initial focus will be at our Biokosmes site, where by far the largest part of our operations site. The work will then roll out to our other locations in subsequent years:
- Undertaking the life cycle analysis on a number of our key brand products
- Assessing the carbon footprint of the Bioskosmes plant. The assessment of Gnesta and the rest of the Group will be undertaken in the subsequent year.
- Undertaking the process to become B Corp certified at Biokosmes, and then also to roll this out across the Group in subsequent years.
- Undertake the Ecovadis certification process again at Biokosmes– in 2021 we were awarded bronze accreditation.