Greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets

SIG’s tar­gets to reduce green­house gas emis­sions have been approved by the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets ini­tia­tive (SBTi), con­firm­ing that the company’s strat­e­gy is aligned with what cli­mate sci­ence says is required to pre­vent dan­ger­ous glob­al warming.
Cli­mate change is one of the world’s biggest chal­lenges and a con­cert­ed glob­al effort is required to keep glob­al warm­ing below 2^oC above pre-indus­tri­al lev­els – the point at which experts pre­dict the worst effects will take hold. The SBTi aims to help com­pa­nies deter­mine how much they must cut their green­house gas emis­sions to do their part and sup­port the aims of the Paris Agreement.

Targeting ambitious reductions

The com­pa­ny chose ‘per litre of food packed’ as the com­para­tor for the val­ue chain met­ric, rather than rev­enue or num­ber of packs pro­duced, to bet­ter reflect its cor­po­rate pur­pose to get food prod­ucts to con­sumers around the world in a safe, sus­tain­able and afford­able way – regard­less of the size of the pack or the com­pa­ny turnover.
Rolf Stan­gl, CEO at SIG, said: “Reduc­ing our green­house gas emis­sions is at the heart of our com­mit­ment to halve our val­ue chain envi­ron­men­tal impacts and go Way Beyond Good. Receiv­ing val­i­da­tion of our tar­gets from the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets ini­tia­tive con­firms that we are on track to sup­port glob­al efforts to tack­le cli­mate change. We have a clear roadmap to help us get there and I’m con­fi­dent that we will achieve these tar­gets by engag­ing with sup­pli­ers and apply­ing our strong engi­neer­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Doing so will not only help to pro­tect the plan­et, it will also present new oppor­tu­ni­ties for our busi­ness and help us con­tin­ue to deliv­er what our cus­tomers need.”

Measuring SIG’s value chain footprint

The com­pa­ny built on its expe­ri­ence with prod­uct life­cy­cle assess­ments to devel­op an inven­to­ry of the organisation’s car­bon foot­print fol­low­ing the Green­house Gas Protocol’s Cor­po­rate and Val­ue Chain Account­ing and Report­ing Standards.
A first esti­mate of total green­house gas emis­sions across the val­ue chain was pub­lished in the company’s 2016 Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­i­ty Report. Since then, the com­pa­ny has refined the inven­to­ry and recal­cu­lat­ed the base-year inven­to­ry accord­ing­ly. The com­pa­ny has also been explor­ing poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties to reduce emis­sions, through a review of its own busi­ness activ­i­ties and dia­logue with key sup­pli­ers, to devel­op reduc­tion tar­gets that are both ambi­tious and achievable.
The met­rics accom­pa­ny­ing SIG’s green­house gas reduc­tion tar­gets are includ­ed in its key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors for mea­sur­ing progress towards its Way Beyond Good ambi­tions. Per­for­mance will be dis­closed annu­al­ly through the company’s cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty report­ing, along­side oth­er met­rics that sup­port SIG’s com­mit­ment to go Way Beyond Good by con­tribut­ing more to soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment than it takes out.