Case study: How Hang Lung Properties promotes sustainability among its suppliers

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2020 Sustainability Report Hang Lung Properties identified a range of material issues, such as customer health and safety, ethics and integrity, energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction, employee wellbeing. Among these, promoting sustainability among its suppliers stands out as a key material issue for Hang Lung Properties.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards              

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Hang Lung Properties engages with:

To identify and prioritise material topics Hang Lung Properties engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels: 

What actions were taken by Hang Lung Properties to promote sustainability among its suppliers?

In its 2020 Sustainability Report Hang Lung Properties reports that it took the following actions for promoting sustainability among its suppliers:

• Embedding sustainability principles in the supply chain
• All Hang Lung Properties suppliers are subject to Hang Lung Properties’ Code of Conduct for Contractors, which stipulates its sustainability principles and minimum requirements, including compliance with local laws and regulations, labour practices, health and safety standards, environmental protection and the prevention of corruption and bribery. In order to facilitate fair competition and optimise value for the Group, Hang Lung Properties implements a set of stringent procurement and tendering policies. Before the start of any tendering process, Hang Lung Properties invites new suppliers to complete a pre-qualification questionnaire to demonstrate the quality of their work and their product or service expertise, and to share details of their partnerships, customer service, timeliness and safety records. Hang Lung Properties also conducts regular assessments of all suppliers and annual performance reviews of major suppliers to monitor and assess their work and sustainability performance. Suppliers and service providers who fail to meet Hang Lung Properties’ requirements may be excluded from future tendering. In serious situations, Hang Lung Properties may even terminate their contract early.

• Promoting sustainable procurement
• Hang Lung Properties’ Sustainable Procurement Policy for Goods and Services encourages its employees, suppliers and contractors in Hong Kong to source environmentally responsible materials, adopt simple packaging, and recycle waste. By implementing this policy, green specifications referencing external guidelines (such as the green specifications adopted by the Hong Kong government) have been incorporated in the tendering documents in order to balance quality, price and environmental impact in Hang Lung Properties’ procurement process. Hang Lung Properties also purchases goods and services locally as much as possible to minimise the environmental footprint arising from transportation, and to benefit the local economy. In 2020, 100% of Hang Lung Properties’ spending on goods and services for its operations in Hong Kong was sourced from 300 local suppliers by its Central Purchasing Department. In 2020, Hang Lung Properties also established a central purchasing function under its China management office with the aim of driving sustainable procurement across its operations in mainland China in a more coordinated manner.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria

2) Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria

Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria does not correspond to any SDG.

Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.2
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.8
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
• Targets: 16.1

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

This case study is based on published information by Hang Lung Properties, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:

https://www.hanglung.com/getmedia/0c4a28a3-19d2-4c5c-94b8-dc9f99bc052f/sr2020_hlp_en_final.pdf?ext=.pdf

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