Stora Enso

Lobbying
Stora Enso discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates.

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 and reports consistently against all its targets. Furthermore, it 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 has a commitment to minimise ecosystem conversion, and discloses some activities working towards this goal. The company discloses details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

GHG emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Additionally, the company reduces its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses its inputs according to an international standard. Additionally, the company discloses which organisms it directly exploits for commercial uses, including wild animal and plant species.

Solid and air pollution
The company is reducing the production of hazardous waste.

Water
The company has a commitment to respect the right to water, and reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Furthermore, the company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
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 is committed to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Additionally, it demonstrates that its human rights risks and impacts identification process includes a focus on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company possesses a policy that prohibits bribery and corruption and also discloses a public commitment to safeguarding personal data. Additionally, it ensures that anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses are integrated into its contracts with direct business relationships. Furthermore, there is a grievance mechanism in place that allows stakeholders to express concerns and register complaints regarding issues related to bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company transparently discloses several aspects of its workforce dynamics and policies. It reveals the proportion of its workforce involved in collective bargaining agreements and shares detailed workforce demographics, including age and gender distributions across various employee categories. A commitment to worker health and safety is evident through its public policy, which also extends expectations to its business relationships, including adhering to defined working hour limits. Additionally, the company not only outlines its method for calculating living wages in its operational regions but also sets a goal to elevate the ratio of female managers to 25% by 2024 and shares that 44.44% of its board consists of women.

Respect human rights
The company demonstrates a commitment to respecting labor and human rights through various measures, as indicated in several publicly available policy statements, aligning with ILO core labour rights and broader human rights. It outlines a process for assessing human rights risks and highlights its salient issues in this domain. Moreover, it details a global system to address these issues, including preventative and mitigative actions, and describes its applicability to its supply chain. The company also ensures stakeholder engagement, particularly those whose human rights may be impacted by its activities, and provides human rights grievance mechanisms accessible to both workers and external stakeholders.

Lobbying
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and to report (potential) misalignments.

Stakeholder engagement
The company could disclose an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities, as well as its process for engaging with each stakeholder group, including frequency and channels, beyond its materiality assessment.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company could disclose group wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain. Moreover, it has an opportunity to assign decision-making and oversight responsibility for its sustainability strategy to the highest governance body. Lastly, while the company states that the board of directors has expertise in sustainability, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company does not have a commitment or time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains, and does not disclose activities working towards zero conversion. Furthermore, the company is not committed to restoring ecosystems.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company discloses biodiversity impact indicators for forestry operations, it has an opportunity to further assess its impacts on nature and biodiversity within its own operations. The company could also assess its impacts on nature within its supply chain, evaluate its own dependencies on nature, and examine dependencies on nature in its 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 existing species populations existing in or adjacent to both 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 does not report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. The company has an opportunity to disclose activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices, and to disclose a target to improve soil health and report progress against it.

Solid and air pollution
The company should commit to avoid developing or marketing new chemicals or products with SVHC (substance of very high concern) properties, as well as work on reducing the production of hazardous substances.

Water
While the company sets water-related targets, the targets are based on intensity, not absolute withdrawal. No evidence was found that the company engages with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. The company does not disclose relevant information on water pollution, nor does it 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 a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company recognizes bribery and corruption yet withholds its identification process details. While its Business Practice Policy illustrates its lobbying and political engagement strategy, it might benefit from embedding this approach within a formal public policy. Despite declaring a non-engagement stance in political contributions within its policy, it remains informalized in public documents. Enhanced transparency could arise from divulging lobbying expenditures and mandating third-party lobbyists to adhere to its policy on lobbying and political engagement.

Provide and promote decent work
The company shares data on total recordable incidents and fatalities but lacks detailed disclosure on various work-related injury metrics and total hours worked. Although it monitors business relationships’ health and safety performance and discloses living wage data for 95% of employees, the mechanisms and expansion of these practices remain undisclosed. The firm, while addressing wage expectations of suppliers and showing a commitment to diversity, could enhance transparency by mandating a living wage and explicitly committing to gender equality. Additionally, gender pay ratio is partially disclosed, omitting comprehensive data across all operations and employee categories.

Respect human rights
The company, while revealing supplier expectations to adhere to ILO’s fundamental work rights, lacks formal commitment via potent language and could unveil its human rights risk assessment results. Though it executes an ESG risk assessment, elucidating its approach towards identifying human rights risks remains an unseized opportunity. Moreover, while general due diligence is disclosed, specification regarding conducting human rights due diligence, especially in mapping risks and impacts within its supply chain, could be enhanced and made explicit.