| Sustainable development priorities
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Our sustainable development (SD) journey started several decades ago and has become more explicit over the course of the last 10 years; today, it is an integral part of our business strategy. Our focus now is to promote and strengthen the SD culture so that it continues to add value to everything we do.
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Focusing on SD priorities
While we have made some significant achievements, we recognize that the journey is far from over. Continuity and focus are important.
Our environmental and CSR priorities are:
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The importance of these issues has also been confirmed with global and local stakeholders, who consider them to be key areas of our SD strategy.
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Mapping material issues
Holcim has a well-established process for managing business risk, with a robust system for identifying and mapping risks at both corporate and Group company level.In 2007, we started to implement a materiality review to ensure that relevant sustainability risks and opportunities are integrated into our broader business risk management system.
The feedback provided by external stakeholders validated the review process and confirmed the issues afforded the highest priority at Group level. Issues and their priority will be revisited regularly as part of our SD management process and in response to ongoing feedback from stakeholders.
The results of the Group-level materiality review are summarized in the graphic below. It reflects the diverse views of the 16 external stakeholders from various disciplines and geographic locations who were interviewed. These stakeholders included:
academics
analysts
business organizations
customers
government representatives
intergovernmental organizations
NGOs
suppliers
trade union representatives.
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SD materiality review - aligning global stakeholder feedback with current Group priorities
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CO2 and energy are universally seen as being of high concern to stakeholders and having a high impact on Holcim. There is also consensus among stakeholders that atmospheric emissions and eco-efficient products have to be a high priority.
The issues where there are a wide range of views include customer and supplier relationships, economic impact, occupational health and safety, community involvement and stakeholder engagement. This reflects the interests and the constituency of the stakeholders interviewed.
Sustainable construction, resources management and employment practices show a difference between the external and internal views. This may be due to the fact that employment practice is an internal issue whereas the other topics are of immediate importance to Holcim, but may only become important to external stakeholders in the future.
Corporate governance was only ranked by less than half of the external stakeholders, but those who did, agree that this is of high importance.
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Highlight
SD materiality review confirms that our SD priorities match SD material issues of concern to stakeholders.
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"The challenges of SD are so wide that a company has to focus or it will get lost. By presenting information in this way (the SD materiality review), the company allows stakeholders to have an overview of key issues, and how Holcim is prioritizing them, and to discuss and challenge this if necessary."
Holger Wallbaum,
Chair in Sustainable Construction, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) |
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