We take our environmental, economic and social sustainability issues seriously. Our commitment to sustainability can be seen in the way we use a number of well known indices to ensure high levels of competence in addressing global and industry challenges.
Dow Jones
The Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) is made up of the world’s leading companies in terms of sustainability.
It captures the top 10% based on long-term economic, environmental and social criteria out of the biggest 2500 companies worldwide. Components are selected according to a systematic assessment that identifies the sustainability leaders in each of 57 industry groups.
For 2008, our overall performance is 71% which means that we have maintained DJSI World and are ranked in the top 10% of leading sustainability companies worldwide.
Business in the Community
The
Business in the Community (BitC) Corporate Responsibility Index assesses the extent to which responsible business practice is integrated into corporate strategy throughout an organisation. It provides a benchmark for companies to evaluate management practice in four key areas (environment, community, marketplace and workplace), and performance in a range of environmental and social impact areas.
This year we had already retained platinum status and after a rigorous assessment procedure we achieved the platinum plus standard, which makes us one of only seven other companies to be awarded this. We have also won eight big ticks this year in the BitC Awards for Excellence, as follows:
- Our progress towards our carbon reduction targets and our work to embed climate change mitigation and adaptation into our business processes
- Our groundbreaking ‘Tap into Water’ campaign to convince our customers of the environmental and cost benefits of choosing the North West’s excellent tap water over bottled water
- Our sustainable supply chain work, which includes encouraging suppliers to measure their own carbon footprint
- Our work to embed corporate responsibility and environmental sustainability across our business and our overall impact on society
- Our leadership in the area of sustainability
Three of the eight Big Ticks are re-accreditations of previous awards for our waste and resource use, our work on enzymic hydrolysis and our United Futures partnership. Please see http://www.bitc.org.uk/media_centre/news/north_west_results.html for more detail.
FTSE4Good Index
In 2008 we retained membership of the FTSE4Good index, the responsible investment index calculated by the global index provider. The FTSE4Good index Series has been designed to measure the performance of companies against globally recognised corporate responsibility standards.
The growth of socially responsible investment (SRI) and growing interest in corporate governance by many global investment institutions has increased the need to understand the relationship between the governance of corporate responsibility and shareholder value. It’s this that the FTSE4Good index seeks to identify and reflect.