Sustainability management

From an organizational perspective, the Sustainability department is part of the Investor Relations & Corporate Communications division; the vice president overseeing Investor Relations & Corporate Communications reports directly to the Executive Board chairman. The Sustainability department serves as the interface between the departments relevant for the topic of sustainability and coordinates all of the related processes in the Group, serving as a contact for the sites. At the same time, it is also responsible for continuously reviewing and developing the sustainability targets. In the process, the department supports the relevant divisions in the operational implementation of the measures.

We make our sustainability achievements transparent in a variety of ways. These include participation in sustainability rankings, involvement in the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), and the voluntary reporting of the past several years. This reporting is oriented to the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). In this separate Non-Financial Report, we use the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards as a guide in describing the concepts and selected KPIs. The GRI report is published every two years, most recently for fiscal year 2017/18. The KPIs are updated annually and released in a consolidated form.

We communicate regularly with our key stakeholders about sustainability-related topics. We believe it is important to maintain a dialogue with employees, customers, suppliers, politicians and society, capital market participants, the media, non-governmental organizations, and the scientific community.