WH Group

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.

Solid and air pollution
The company partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion and community impact area.

Act ethically
The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and incorporate anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Furthermore, the company has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers. Furthermore, the company discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements, as well as the percentage of its workforce for each employee category by age group and gender.

Respect human rights
The company indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequency and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate. However, there is an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain and report consistently against all its targets. Furthermore, while the company discloses a remuneration policy related to sustainability at subsidiary level, it could link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues at group level. Lastly, the company could improve its transparency by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to avoid ecosystem conversion, including deforestation, or promote restoration. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

GHG emissions
The company should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Crucially, the company needs to reduce its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company has integrated climate change mitigation into its business development strategies and emphasized its commitments in climate change, energy, and emissions management, it has an opportunity to assess and disclose its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations and upstream business relationships. Furthermore, understanding its dependencies on nature in its operations and in its supply chain would enhance its sustainability measures.

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 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 activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices, 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 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 and waste. While the company discloses some data on harmful air pollutants, it has an opportunity to report regularly at group level and to disclose time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain. The company could also provide quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging, including the amount of plastic waste generated and proportions directed from or to disposal.

Water
The company does not disclose relevant information related to water, in its operations or supply chains.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not show if it is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights or land rights of local communities.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and 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 has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. Additionally, it can create a policy outlining its lobbying and political engagement approach. It could also specify that it does not make political contributions, and divulge its expenditures on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
The company recommends its suppliers to improve working environment for its employees. It could however establish a policy expecting suppliers to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers, and disclose how it monitors their performance.

Additionally, although the company pays fair wages, it can commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. It could also elaborate on its methods of determining a living wage for its operational regions, and detail how it works to support suppliers in paying this wage standard.

Furthermore, in alignment with its commitment to diversity and equal opportunity, the company can explicitly commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment in a broader sense. Despite the company targeting to increase female representation to least 35% of supervisors and above, it has an opportunity to make this target time-bound. The company could also report data including the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
While the company states that it respects and protects individual rights within its operations and across its value chain, it has an opportunity to explicitly commit to protecting human rights and formalize this commitment in a policy document. Additionally, although it discloses statements committing to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work, it could use stronger language to formalize this commitment and extend it to its business relationships.

Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, covering its own operations and the supply chain. The company could also elaborate on its process for assessing and identifying its salient human rights issues. Moreover, the company could disclose a global system to address, prevent, or mitigate its salient human rights issues.