Sustainability blog series: where to begin?
Corporate sustainability, what does it mean for us? What will be our first step? How to start? Such questions are relatable and common when starting a new journey; a sustainability journey. In 2022, Genexis took important steps in revitalizing our sustainability efforts and we set our first sustainability ambitions.
Before that, we had already carried out sustainability initiatives within social and environmental areas for our operations and products. This was a good start but we wanted to do better. That’s why we executed a third-party materiality assessment, thoughtfully created our sustainability strategy, and listed multiple targets: meeting fundamental responsibilities in areas of human rights, labor, environment, and ethics.
Genexis aspires sustainability market leadership in the fiber broadband industry because we believe in sustainability and we really want to make a difference! Accordingly, we minimize our climate impact through resource efficiency and reduction of emissions. We elevate innovation and technology for sustainability and the circular economy. We invest in an attractive, healthy, and motivating workplace, supporting our workforce in making things happen. We monitor and refine governance, including high business ethics with zero tolerance for corruption and business resilience to secure we succeed with all these ambitions.
However, these matters do not come overnight. We need to take a step-by-step approach, be transparent, be open for discussion, and: learn along the way. Through this process we will be following different guidelines and protocols such as: the ten principles declared by the United Nations, and Global Reporting Initiative or GHG Protocol for measuring and reporting. For independent assessments we will be using Ecovadis or CDP.
By following these standards we grow and become better and more professional in our sustainability approach. We want to participate in standardization and act ahead of legislation to ensure we do it in time following EU norms, national laws, and the Paris climate agreement.
With this first blog, we start a series of several blogs addressing the environmental and social ambitions of Genexis in our own operations and the value chain. In the upcoming blogs, we will share how we tackle sustainability as a topic and aim to extract clear takeaways that we can benefit from as a society.
A short preview of some of the upcoming topics:
- Minimizing climate impact
- Innovate toward a circular economy
- Investing in our workforce
- … and more to come!
We look forward to going on this sustainability journey together with you!
Author: Mr. Olivier van Duuren