Operations

While our products can help deliver our vision for a cleaner, healthier world, we must ensure we make them in ways that lower our own environmental impact. Last year, we committed to reaching net zero by 2040 and developed a series of 2030 targets to set us on our way. We also joined the UN Global Compact’s Business Ambition for 1.5°C.

Managing our environmental performance

Our Sustainability Council is responsible for agreeing our overall approach to environmental performance.

We have group policies, processes and systems that help us achieve a high level of environmental performance. We also have a number of corporate standards that cover the following environmental aspects:

• Waste
• Energy
• Emissions to atmosphere
• Discharge to surface and ground waters
• Protection of waste water discharge systems

We assess our sites against these standards as part of our ongoing audit work. All our sites are assessed by our centralised internal audit team at least once every three years.

In all, 86% of our manufacturing sites use environmental management systems that meet ISO 14001. Many of our operations are covered by environmental permits or licences and, as a minimum, we ensure we comply with all regulations in the locations where we operate.

We expect all our sites to report any incident that affects the environment to their local authorities. We classify any spills that occur on unmade ground or near drinking water sources as significant. We reported no significant spills during 2021/22. We had one reportable environmental fine of £12,000 in China. We measure progress against our key performance indicators (KPIs) monthly and use the data to improve performance. The details behind the methodologies used for our KPIs and the third-party assurance certificate can be found in our Annual Report.

Our performance in 2021/22