What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2015 Sustainability Report Desso identified a range of material issues, such as customer health & safety, product environmental impact, material health, environmental impact of supply-chain, natural & social capital accounting. Among these, designing and producing recyclable products containing recycled content stands out as a key material issue for Desso.

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 organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

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 Desso engages with:   

Stakeholder Group

Academia

Consultants

Customers

Employees

Governments

Industry and trade associations

NGO’s

Reporting agencies

Shareholders

Suppliers

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify material topics, Desso carried out a stakeholder survey, sending out a total of 198 surveys, of which 62 were completed by stakeholders (a 31% response rate).

What actions were taken by Desso to design and produce recyclable products containing recycled content?

In its 2015 Sustainability Report Desso reports that it took the following actions for designing and producing recyclable products containing recycled content:

• Making sure products meet the requirements of the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard
• Desso makes sure its products are certified according to the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard which, among others, requires designers and manufacturers to:
  • maximize the percentage of renewable materials or recycled content in a product
  • maximize the percentage of materials that may be safely reused, recycled or composted
  • designate products as biological (may safely return to nature)

• Increasing recycled content contained in carpets, carpet tiles and sports pitches
• In 2014, the amount of defined recycled content for carpets, carpet tiles and sports pitches more than doubled from 5% in 2013 to 10.5%, and doubled once more in 2015, to 20 per cent.

• Using eco-effective design for products
• Desso, in accordance with the Cradle to Cradle philosophy, puts a lot of emphasis on the early phases of product design, striving to achieve a better design in the first place, to make sure materials used will be healthy for use and recycling.

• Offering customers the option to lease rather than own carpets
• [tweetthis]By leasing carpets, Desso controls recycling and helps customers minimize their own impacts.[/tweetthis] In 2014, Desso and DLL, a global financial solutions partner, offered Desso’s customers the option to lease rather than own the carpets they require, which makes Desso better able to ensure products are returned for recycling.

Which GRI indicators/Standards have been addressed?

The GRI indicator addressed in this case is: G4-EN2: Percentage of materials used that are recycled input materials and the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 301-2 Recycled input materials used

 

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

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

Research by well-recognised institutions is clearly proving that responsible companies can look to the future with optimism.

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By registering for the next 2-day FBRH GRI-Standards Certified and ISEP approved Course you will be taking the first step in gaining the many benefits of sustainability reporting.

 

References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Desso, 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) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

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

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