(UP-BEAT MUSIC)
More and more large businesses will be reporting...
on their sustainability policies and accomplishments.
This is coming from the European guideline Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive,
the CSRD.
In the sustainability report there are three main themes...
environment, social and governance.
Privately held SME businesses won't be required to report,
but the SME might have to deal with the CSRD...
through questions about data from suppliers or customers.
Kevin Berveling of Geostick and Robert Brand of Concordia...
will explain how they deal with the CSRD.
Concordia Holding is a building materials trade...
with two formulas in kitchens, bathrooms and plumbing.
We're a privately held LLC...
and we're located in the northern Netherlands.
We're 118 years old and a court supplier.
Sustainability runs in our genes and for the CSRD...
we're obligated to report in 2025.
The CSRD concerns...
reporting on sustainability.
It's not just about our own
sustainability...
and our own impact, but also about...
aspects further up or down the chain.
Geostick is a label-printing company, think about...
a label for a bottle of mayonnaise, a packet of cheese, a can of paint.
You really see our labels everywhere.
We've been doing this for a hundred years.
As a production company we impact the environment directly...
as well as society, and we try to conduct business as sustainably as possible.
What I like about the CSRD...
is that it allows us...
to use these guidelines to become
even more transparent in reporting...
on our sustainability initiatives and objectives.
If I could start over, I wouldn't start with the first step,
but with the final step instead, the actual report.
I'd find an example report from a company...
that's already reported according to the CSRD.
That gives you a much better idea of what you're doing.
What are your goals? What do you want to make?
We began with the CSRD...
in collaboration with our trade association Hibin.
To practise we went through...
the entire CSRD process for a fictional construction materials business.
We identified about fifteen stakeholders.
Those are, for example, the accountant, the bank, our customers,
our employees, our suppliers, our procurement organisation,
but some more abstract groups too, like the government, nature.
We approached most of the stakeholders with questionnaires,
but we also questioned a few stakeholders in personal or group conversations.
It turned out to be better to have conversations, especially for customers,
because that allows for a little bit of context to be given with the questions,
which is very difficult in a questionnaire.
There's a lot of data points you have to report on,
but if you boil it down to the core...
and also only the sustainability themes...
that are relevant for you, you'll notice it actually isn't that bad.
Not every sub theme is equally important for every business.
In conversation with the stakeholders, you find out what's relevant to your company.
Of course there are things you'll have to report on,
like CO2 emissions or your waste streams.
Those are known.
But consider reporting on the number of occupational accidents as well.
We've thankfully had registration of that for a long time,
but I can imagine that...
a business can't just set that up like one-two-three.
So my tip is to take a good look at those datapoints.
Is there anything in there I'm not collecting yet...
and should I set something up for that?
Concordia strives to be an excellent employer,
which also comes up in the CSRD in the social aspects.
Good employment practises are one of the points...
we have to and want to report.
For CSRD it's also an obligation to...
identify the CO2 emissions of your procured materials.
We're lucky that we mainly buy paper from a number of large suppliers.
Those large suppliers are also wokring on this.
They have that data available and can share it with us.
I can imagine this might be harder for smaller suppliers.
But keep in mind, you don't need to know...
your precise CO2 emissions for everything.
Well, I think that mainly the stakeholder analyses...
increase awareness about sustainable enterprising,
something I think is very important.
One tip I'd like to give...
to organisations that still need to begin with the CSRD, is to just do it.
There's a lot of information about the CSRD out there, and at the same time that’s...
a pitfall too, you lose sight of the bigger picture.
Choose a roadmap that you think is good,
that can work for you, and work on that.
Find collaborations within the industry.
It'll save you a lot of work if you can do it together.
Another tip is to involve a consultant,
so the consultant can make sure the audit trail is there for the accountant.
Lastly, it's important to start on time...
so you'll have enough time to...
properly do your stakeholder analysis for example.