Firmenich

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain. Lastly, the company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity and social issues.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company is committed to achieving zero conversion.

GHG emissions
The company has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company openly shares its efforts to enhance soil health and promote agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company demonstrates commitment, has policies, and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. It also discloses quantitative data related to the elimination of single-use plastic items. The company discloses hazardous waste diverted from disposal and transported to offsite treatment. Additionally, it reports regularly on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants.

Water
The company discloses its processes for managing and monitoring discharge water quality. The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its operations, reports its water withdrawals for its operations in water-stressed areas, and engages with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. The company reports a decrease in water pollution through reducing its previous COD targets. The company regularly reports on water pollution. The company has targets to reduce water pollution and reports progress against them. The company has a commitment to respect the right to water.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Also, the company discloses its processes to identify and recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights and describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company demonstrates that its human rights risks and impacts identification process includes a focus on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company has an anti-bribery and anti-corruption policy and includes relevant clauses in its contracts with direct business partners. It also provides a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to report bribery and corruption concerns. Additionally, the company explicitly states that it does not make political contributions.

Provide and promote decent work.
The company has a public policy committing to worker health and safety and expects its business partners to do the same. It also discloses its methods for monitoring these partners’ health and safety performance. The company states that it pays all workers a living wage and, explains how it calculates this wage in various regions and encourages suppliers to pay living wages. It reveals that 37% of its workforce is covered by collective bargaining agreements and provides demographic data on its workforce, including age, gender, and race or ethnicity. The company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment, setting targets to increase diversity among senior leaders by 50% by 2025 and in the leadership team by 50% by 2030. It also aims to eliminate the gender pay gap by 2025 and discloses that women comprise 33.33% of its board.

Respect human rights
The company has public policy statements committing to respect human rights and the ILO’s core labor rights and expects the same from its suppliers. It outlines its procedures for identifying and assessing human rights risks in both its own operations and its supply chain, disclosing its most significant human rights issues. The company provides a case study addressing a key human rights risk and identifies categories of stakeholders potentially affected by its activities. It also has grievance mechanisms accessible to workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted.

Lobbying
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Additionally, it has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and to report (potential) misalignments,

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While the company reports consistently against some targets, including social inclusion, it has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets. Also, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics beyond social inclusion.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company has revealed some efforts toward addressing conversion, but this does not necessarily ensure practices that align with DCF standards. There is a lack of time-bound objectives for achieving conversion-free supply chains, and the company has not demonstrated commitment to ecosystem restoration. Furthermore, details and outcomes of restoration projects in areas impacted by the company’s operations or its suppliers have not been disclosed.

GHG emissions
The company has an opportunity to report progress against these targets and reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions.

Impact and dependencies assessment
The company discloses using a toolkit consistent with SBTN and IUCN guidelines for assessing risks and setting up action plans related to industrial activity. It has tested this methodology on three pilot sites in 2022. However, there is no evidence that the company fully discloses the methodology and results. While the company has some practices in assessing its impacts on nature within its own operations, it’s unclear if this extends to all upstream activities. The company does not disclose assessments of its dependencies on nature within its operations or upstream business relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
The company has an opportunity to disclose locations within or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity, both in its own operations and its supplier locations. It could also disclose species populations existing in or adjacent to its own and its suppliers’ locations, as well as the conservation status of species identified at its own sites according to national and international lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose its inputs according to an international standard and to report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. The company also has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and to report progress against it.

Solid and air pollution
The company does not disclose relevant pollution-related information in its operations or supply chains.

Water
While the company has a target to reach water neutrality at water-stressed sites, they do not report baseline years or current progress, and the target does not necessarily translate to absolute withdrawal across all operations. The company does not disclose its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not disclose its processes to identify and recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights or describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has a commitment to give the highest priority to the health and safety of the communities in which it operates. However, it has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment of local communities. The company should provide evidence of tracking its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities. Although the company states that it does not tolerate retaliation of any kind, it has an opportunity to commit to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation, or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders.

Act ethically
The company has a process for identifying bribery and corruption but could provide more details. While its Code of Ethics declares a strictly non-political stance, formalizing this in a public policy document could offer further clarity. The company also has the opportunity to disclose its lobbying expenditures and specify that third-party lobbyists must adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work.
The company discloses a gender pay gap, specifying no significant difference in median pay between men and women. It also reports this data for various employee categories, including exempt, non-exempt, director, and middle management. However, it has not provided evidence of disclosing the gender pay ratio for each employee category in its direct operations, broken down by significant locations.

Respect human rights
The company reveals that it has mapped out salient issues across its full value chain to understand risks related to modern slavery. However, there is no evidence that the company discloses its methods for identifying other human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or its own operations. While the company indicates that it has a global system to address its key human rights risks, further details on this system could be provided.