2030 is shaping up to be an important anniversary at Stahl – not least because it marks 100 years since the birth of our company, which was originally founded by Harry Stahl during the Great Depression. It is also an important milestone on our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) journey.
This is reflected in our Stahl ESG Roadmap to 2030, which supports us in our ambition to become a more responsible organization and help drive positive change in our value chain. The Roadmap is a list of commitments and targets for 2023 and 2030, which are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This strategy uses precise metrics to track our progress toward our goals, which are based on a wide range of environmental, social, and governance topics.
At Stahl, our ESG ambitions stem from our company’s core purpose: Touching lives, for a better world. This refers to the perceivable impact we make each day, through our products, our behaviors, and our long-term vision for the future of our organization.
However, this purpose also refers to the all-important responsibility we have to be a catalyst for positive change in our value chain and wider society. And at every level, our ESG approach reflects this commitment to shaping a more responsible chemical industry. For example, this is evident in the way we collaborate with our value chain partners – working together to reduce our collective impact on the environment and accelerate the transition to renewable feedstocks.
Stahl has made significant progress against its ESG ambitions over the past year. A key ongoing target is the reduction of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since 2015 – the year the Paris Agreement was signed – we have reduced our Scope 1 and 2 absolute emissions by approximately 30%. In 2022, Stahl’s CO2e intensity for Scopes 1 and 2 fell by 3%, reflecting a reduction of 15% and 24% for Scopes 1 and 2, respectively, in absolute terms.
But Scope 1 and Scope 2 are only part of the picture. Stahl has been working with an external partner to improve our process for calculating our Scope 3 indirect emissions, which account for over 90% of our total carbon footprint (Scopes 1, 2, and 3). As a result of this process, we were able to submit an emissions reduction target to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The proposed target would mean reducing our Scope 3 upstream emissions by at least 25% by 2030 (versus our 2021 base year). We also aim to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42% over the same period.
2022 was the year we received an EcoVadis Platinum rating, placing us among the top 1% of companies assessed by this leading sustainability ratings platform. By achieving the highest possible rating level, we have already surpassed a key target on our ESG Roadmap: to achieve a Gold rating by 2023. This swift progress partly reflects the significant steps we have taken in recent years to improve our internal assessment processes. These efforts included setting up a dedicated EcoVadis team within Stahl.
Our commitment to EcoVadis sustainability ratings also extends to our wider supply chain. 83% of Stahl’s raw material spend comes from EcoVadis-rated suppliers, and our target is for all the EcoVadis-rated suppliers in our network to achieve a bronze medal by 2030.
As we seek to multiply our positive impact on the world around us, ensuring the well-being of our people remains an important foundation of our ESG approach. Key to this responsibility is keeping Stahl employees safe from potential health and safety risks in the workplace. As part of our ESG Roadmap to 2030, we have, therefore, set a target to make all Stahl manufacturing sites ISO 45001-certified. ISO 45001 is a new safety standard that requires companies to take a more proactive approach to safety. We are on track to meet this target: in 2022, 59% of our products were produced at ISO 45001-certified sites.
We’re also working to support our people in other ways, including by increasing employee engagement and making Stahl a more inclusive place to work. Our Employee Experience Survey, which we conducted for the first time in 2021, revealed lower levels of engagement among female employees and younger members of the workforce.
This underscores the importance of investing in our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) culture and vision. In early 2022, we began defining and introducing local DEI plans in each of Stahl’s legal entities worldwide. We also appointed local DEI committees for each of these entities, which are responsible for implementing company-wide DEI policies and defining local DEI action plans. Our new Global DEI Steering Committee oversees all our DEI activities and strategies on an organization-wide level.
A key DEI-related target on our ESG Roadmap is to improve gender equality and the representation of women across Stahl. By 2030, we aim to achieve 30–60% female representation across Stahl’s Leadership Team, Extended Leadership Team, and heads of function. To achieve this, we are recruiting women into head-of-function positions at Stahl, creating a strong pipeline of internal female candidates to fill future vacancies.
At Stahl, we have a responsibility to our stakeholders to manage our business responsibly – as well as profitably – and to demonstrate business practices that are consistently ethical, transparent, and accountable. We believe this is the foundation of good governance. In 2022, Stahl took important steps to strengthen its ESG governance framework. We added the new position of Supply Chain Transparency Manager to our ESG team and established working groups focused on reducing Scope 3 emissions.
Stahl also recognizes the importance of looking outside our own organization to help create a more responsible chemical industry. In 2022, we continued to work closely with our partners and industry peers to strengthen governance industry-wide and be a catalyst for positive change in our value chain. For example, Stahl is a founding member of the Renewable Carbon Initiative (RCI), which aims to accelerate the transition to renewable feedstocks within the chemical value chain. In 2022, Stahl participated in several RCI working group activities, with key topics including renewable carbon content labeling and life cycle assessments.
During the year, we continued to expand our network by joining CLIB (Cluster Industrial Biotechnology), an open innovation consortium of biotechnology stakeholders. CLIB is committed to providing networking opportunities for its members across different industries and sectors, promoting the shared goal of using biotechnology to promote sustainability. Joining this network will, therefore, help advance Stahl’s open innovation ambitions.
The latest step on our ESG journey occurred in March 2023 with the publication of Stahl’s 2022 ESG Report. This is the 10th edition of this important publication. We originally launched the report in 2013 to provide Stahl's stakeholders with greater understanding and transparency surrounding our ESG strategy and activities. Since then, we have continued to set and meet ambitious targets on a range of environmental, social, and governance themes. And we’re not stopping now!
As 2030 draws nearer, we are exploring different ways to strengthen our reporting on ESG issues. In 2022, Stahl took preliminary steps toward understanding and addressing the requirements and implications of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a forthcoming EU regulation. In 2022, we established a project team to unpick the nuances of the CSRD, including double materiality, governance elements, and other related ESG disclosures.
Age is just a number, as they say, but as we move closer to our medium-term ESG targets, there’s no denying that 2030 will be an important anniversary for Stahl in more ways than one.