Category Archives: Environmental Sustainability and ESG Reporting

It’s Not All Bad News: How ESG Management Is Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change

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Why Your ESG Management Program is a Good-News Story
Many organizations are innovating to become more sustainable. From leading brands to small businesses, everyone can make a contribution to building a better world.

In the fight against climate change, the news reports can be dire reading. This summer alone, an unprecedented heat wave in China is impacting the global supply chain, creating hydropower shortages and providing conditions for devastating fires. The American south is grappling with weather that shifts radically between drought and severe flooding. In the UK and Europe, a brutal heatwave has killed hundreds and caused significant property damage as a result of rural fires. 

It would be easy to say that this is simply fearmongering by the media, but regular reports from climate science support the thesis that man-made climate change is having a significant impact on severe weather events. No matter where we look, the news about climate change seems all bad. 

However, the truth … Read more...

The Environment Ranks Highest as an ESG Priority for those Surveyed in Europe

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New research from Intelex of EHS and ESG professionals in Europe finds that more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally focused ESG activities ahead of other ESG-related considerations.
New research from Intelex of EHS and ESG professionals in Europe finds that more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally focused ESG activities ahead of other ESG-related considerations.

Doing good for the planet is emerging as the primary area of environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) focus for those tasked to manage the progress of ESG initiatives in their organizations, according to recent research conducted across Europe by Intelex.

The environmental aspect of ESG consumes more attention than either of social or governance elements, according to a 2022 survey of more than 700 environmental health and safety (EHS) and ESG professionals from 10 European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

The third section of the report, Engaging Workers Growing Business and Protecting the Planet, reveals more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally … Read more...

Leaders2Leaders The Network: Capturing and Actioning End User Feedback is Crucial to Engagement

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Leaders2Leaders The Network features a series of interactive, customer-led sessions we hope will encourage best practice sharing, networking and collaboration with our Intelex European customers. The sessions – for users by users – offer insight, pro tips and more to help you get the most from our platform.

A recent Leaders2Leaders The Network session featured Heidelberg Cement’s Paulina Lagodzinska, business analyst for EHS, sharing her insights about capturing end user feedback and why that is so important when it comes to adoption of a software system.

Heidelberg Cement has 58,000 employees in 60 countries, and 14,000 are active Intelex users. And by active, we mean ACTIVE: Since 2015, the company has recorded 63,000 corrective and preventative actions, registered half a million incident reports and half a million safety conversations. “Intelex is a very, very important tool for us,” said Lagodzinska.

Here are the four key lessons she shared during the session: ​

1. … Read more...

Cory: No Waste from Waste

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By focusing on recycling and resource recovery, Cory keeps materials in use for as long as possible and helps grow London’s circular economy.

Cory’s goal is to ensure London has a safe, clean and sustainable way of managing its recyclable and non-recyclable waste. The company uses a river-based infrastructure to help London manage its recyclable and non-recyclable waste, making the city cleaner and safer.

Founded in the mid–late 1800s and incorporated 125 years ago in 1896 as W.M. Cory & Son, the company has evolved from a coal distribution company on the River Thames into one of the UK’s leading waste management, recycling and energy recovery companies. Their vision is to be partner of choice for sustainable waste management throughout London and the South East of England.

The company’s vision is to be the partner of choice for sustainable waste management for London, with the objective of preventing unnecessary … Read more...

Lessons from the U.S. Army Climate Change Strategy

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As the threat of climate change becomes a reality, the world will become a more dangerous place. To meet this challenge, the U.S. Army has released its first climate change strategy.
As the threat of climate change becomes a reality, the world will become a more dangerous place. To meet this challenge, the U.S. Army has released its first climate change strategy.

One doesn’t usually think of the military as being concerned primarily with sustainability. However, the U.S. Army is proving that climate change preparation is necessary for every organization by releasing its first ever Climate Strategy. The strategy emphasizes making the Army more adaptive and resilient to a changing world while decarbonizing its operations in line with the government’s overall approach to meeting climate reduction targets.

This approach will be an important component of a strategy designed to increase the Army’s self-sufficiency and maintain its operational superiority in the face of climate-related disruption. The U.S. Army generates more pollution than 140 of the countries in the world, which means its sustainability efforts will make a significant contribution to international … Read more...

The Future of ESG Readiness: How To Use Technology for Strategy and Goal Setting Beyond Compliance 

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The recent SEC proposal for climate-related disclosures proves that not only is ESG here to stay, but that regulatory disclosures are going to become a lot more complex and strategic.

Not long ago, the way businesses interacted with the market was based on simple supply and demand: businesses offered goods and services, customers bought them and the system worked more-or-less as designed. Considerations of environmental impact, social justice and principled governance were important, but because they weren’t standardized or enforced according to any universal benchmarks, they often existed in the more erudite realm of ethics or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and environment, society and corporate (ESG) compliance seemed far away from reality.

Jump ahead a few years to the present day and you’ll see that considerations regarding ESG have changed, and so have the ways we think about risk, stakeholder engagement and materiality. ESG has given consumers and investors the … Read more...

Any Way the Wind Blows: New Enhesa Report Highlights Air Emissions Requirements Around the World

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As climate change momentum grows, so will your company’s list of air emission requirements.

Climate change is on more regulatory radars than ever before, and that means more obligations and regulations are on their way. In the United States, ­the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just released proposed regulations that “would require information about a registrant’s climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on its business, results of operations or financial condition.”

In August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that global warming will increase by more than 1.5°C this century. More stringent legislation is expected around the world, and a new white paper from Enhesa, “Around the World in Air Emissions: Winds of Changing Requirements across the Globe” by EHS regulatory consultants Evelyn Chuang, Beatriz García Fernández-Viagas and Nathaniel Gajasa, highlights key developments in air emissions regulations for the European Union, United States and … Read more...

External Materiality and ESG: What You Should Be Looking For

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Material risk management, or materiality, is a concept that is growing in importance as companies try to determine the material threats to their business.

As a business leader thinking about operational risk, do you consider internal risks first? For example, when considering operational risk, are regulatory compliance, talent retention or catastrophic asset failures resulting in production shutdowns top of mind? When you consider external risks, do you land on those that are most obvious, such as shifts in regulatory burdens, currency fluctuations, competitive threats, etc.…? (The list goes on and on.)

Like most leaders, you probably pay attention to ongoing issues, while staying as up to date as possible about evolving challenges and threats to the business so you aren’t caught off guard.

The problem with this approach is that it leaves an organization in an inherently vulnerable position. It’s hard to truly stay up to date. External risks are … Read more...

5 ESG Policy Trends Changing Business: Now What?

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For business leaders, ESG data informs all decision-making processes – capital allocation, budget setting, cash flows and forecasts.
For business leaders, ESG data informs all decision-making processes – capital allocation, budget setting, cash flows and forecasts.

Until today, Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) has been defined mostly by voluntary practices, as the key policymakers (market authorities as well as national and international regulators) adopted a “sit and stare” approach and let the markets decide how to deal with ESG. 

The tide has turned, with jurisdictions now racing to introduce strict mandatory requirements that bind companies to contribute to the public policy goals governments are setting in relation to climate specifically and ESG more broadly.

What’s Changed? 

These developments have deep implications for companies, investors, and financial markets. Let’s look at five main policy trends that are significantly reshaping business: 

1. No more ESG standards alphabet soup – While new niche frameworks and guidelines will always pop up (let’s keep in mind that ESG evolves constantly), the European Union (EU) mandatory Sustainability Reporting … Read more...

Four Reasons Why Senior Leaders Should Care about ESG Materiality

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Here are four reasons that will convince even the most skeptical of business leaders on why running an ESG materiality assessment is now more important than ever before. 
If you are finding it difficult to win the attention of your company’s board members and senior leaders over ESG materiality, here are four reasons that will convince even the most skeptical of business leaders on why running a materiality assessment is now more important than ever before. 

A Materiality assessment, when conducted as a strategic process, across key operational areas of the company (sustainability, legal, strategy, risk) and not as an isolated exercise, has proven to produce a number of positive outcomes. 

For instance, a clear assessment of material issues followed by transparent reporting, shows an improvement in a company’s performance while reducing its exposure to different risks – including reputational, financial and legal. Moreover, a credible and detailed explanation of materiality has been determined as a fundamental requirement to attract investors, and a meaningful argument to get the board and executives buy-in. 

(This article is reprinted with permission from Datamaran. … Read more...