Case study: How Smurfit Kappa supports the communities where it operates

What are the material issues the company has identified?            

In its 2019 Sustainable Development Report Smurfit Kappa identified a range of material issues, such as climate change awareness, energy use and emissions, responsible forestry, high-quality and sustainable products. Among these, supporting the communities where it operates stands out as a key material issue for Smurfit Kappa.

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 Smurfit Kappa engages with: 

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify and prioritise material topics Smurfit Kappa conducted an online survey for internal stakeholders (employees) and interviews with key external stakeholders, such as customers, investors and suppliers.

What actions were taken by Smurfit Kappa to support the communities where it operates?

In its 2019 Sustainable Development Report Smurfit Kappa reports that it took the following actions for supporting the communities where it operates:

• Promoting community involvement
• Smurfit Kappa always considers the concerns of the wider community at national and international level. Community involvement builds trust and serves as a link to the issues important to Smurfit Kappa. Local general managers are expected to represent the Group as part of the local community and play a positive part in its development. In its philanthropic work, Smurfit Kappa focuses on self-help initiatives, education and health programmes, and contributes through financial donations and volunteering by local employees. The circular economy has an impact on communities as well, and Smurfit Kappa participates widely in local circular operations. Some examples of these are:
  • Delivering district heating from Smurfit Kappa’s paper mill to the residents of Piteå, Sweden
  • Supporting municipality water treatment systems with Smurfit Kappa’s effluent that has nutrients that help treat municipality waste water in Nettingsdorf, Austria and Nervión, Spain
  • Treating municipality waste water in Morava, Czech Republic
  • Maintaining rural road structures at Smurfit Kappa’s Colombian Forestry Operations
  • Collecting city-recovered paper in Malaga, Spain

• Launching the Smurfit Kappa Foundation
• The Smurfit Kappa Foundation was formed in 2011 and supports sustainable projects in the countries where Smurfit Kappa Smurfit Kappa focuses on projects involving disadvantaged children in the areas of health and nutrition, basic care and early education. Smurfit Kappa is particularly interested in projects in which Smurfit Kappa employees or their families are involved and where they would benefit from support from Smurfit Kappa’s Foundation. Any support Smurfit Kappa gives is in addition to and not a substitute for funding such projects might already receive from the local Smurfit Kappa operations. The Foundation’s goal is to end the cycle of poverty and dependence that exists in some of the communities and countries in which Smurfit Kappa operates, using the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a guide. The projects Smurfit Kappa supports tackle global issues with local relevance, and operate under the ethos: ’Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ Thus, Smurfit Kappa supports sustainable projects which involve input from the local community and are capable of becoming self-sufficient in the long-term.

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

The GRI Standards addressed in this are:

1) Disclosure 413-1 Operations with local community engagement, impact assessments, and development programs

2) Disclosure 413-2 Operations with significant actual and potential negative impacts on local communities

Disclosure 413-1 Operations with local community engagement, impact assessments, and development programs does not correspond to any SDG.

Disclosure 413-2 Operations with significant actual and potential negative impacts on local communities corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1: No Poverty
• Targets: 1.4
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger
• Targets: 2.3

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Smurfit Kappa, 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 original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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