About Trelleborg’s CR Report
The Trelleborg Group’s Corporate Responsibility Report (formerly known as Sustainability Report) is published annually in April and covers aspects related to the environment, health, safety and social issues, including business ethics.
The aim is that the report shall give an accurate overview of the Group’s status and activities in the above areas, as well as their business-related consequences. The intended target groups are shareholders, investors, employees, customers and suppliers, authorities, NGOs, the media and local stakeholders.
The report follows the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Guidelines for sustainability reporting, version G3. The CR report is published annually in conjunction with the annual report and is available at
www.trelleborg.com/CR. Prior years’ environmental and sustainability reports are also available from this website. The report for the preceding year was published in April 2007. Unless stated otherwise, the data presented refer to the 2007 calendar year. The figures for the preceding year (2006) are shown in parentheses.
The report covers all of Trelleborg’s production facilities, in total 125 (127) sites. A complete list of the sites included is provided
here. Plants that were acquired or newly established during the year are included in the report for the portion of the year that they were officially part of the Group. This applies to Dej (Romania), Tauragé (Lithuania) and Kuressaare (Estonia).
Plants that were divested or where operations ceased during 2007 are included in the report until the date that they were no longer part of the Group. This applies to the plants in i Ashchurch (UK), Coventry (UK), Dawson (US), Runcorn (UK), Rydaholm (Sweden) and Trowbridge (UK).
The information and key figures included in this report have been selected based on GRI’s Core Indicators and with guidance from GRI’s principles on definition of report content. The focus of the report has been directed toward the indicators that represent the significant CR/sustainability aspects of Trelleborg’s operations. In 2007, a materiality analysis was conducted in which external and internal stakeholders were given the chance to submit their views on what aspects they believed were most important for Trelleborg to consider and report. The outcome of this analysis has been taken into account in this report in so far as the aspects that were identified as being most important by stakeholders have been assigned priority in terms of space allocated.
The significant CR/sustainability aspects in the
risk-opportunity summary were identified and prioritized based on the same criteria, that is, potential impact on the environment, people and society, risk and strategic importance. This work was performed under the direction of the materiality analysis conducted in 2007, GRI’s principles, ISO 14001, laws and other requirements, internal and external expertise and in dialogue with the authorities and other stakeholders.
The report’s structure coincides with the structure in Trelleborg’s Code of Conduct: the first section deals with responsibility for the workplace and environment, the second with responsibility to customers and suppliers, and the third and final section with responsibility to society and the community.
It is the company’s aim to continue to develop the report in line with Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, our Code of Conduct and the UN Global Compact.
The design of the report has taken into consideration the opinions presented in conjunction with active stakeholder dialog and by the stakeholders who monitor the progress of Trelleborg’s CR activities. We view these opinions as valuable contributions to the continuous improvement of this CR report.
The report primarily encompasses operations within the Trelleborg Group that are significant from a CR/sustainability perspective. This also includes joint-venture companies. Operations that are outside the direct control of the company, such as the suppliers of goods and services (for example, transportation and raw materials), are not included in the figures. The information upon which the report is based is collected from production plants, which represent approximately 89 percent of the total number of employees in the Group. The report does not encompass distribution facilities, warehouses, offices or other operations that have limited or no direct impact on the environment. Given that workplace and social performance are equally as important for these units as for others, the ambition is that reports will also include accounts from these sources from 2009.
Each plant reports information in accordance with the Group standard for CR reporting.
The manager of each facility is responsible for the correctness and quality assurance of the data provided. In addition, further quality controls are performed by the Group’s Environmental and HR staff functions, whereby data is compared with figures from prior years and data from similar facilities and verified through random sampling against other available information before the information in finally compiled.
A selection of key figures critical to the operations contained in the sustainability report is externally verified.
Keyfigures in this report have been defined based on GRI’s indicator protocols and are described in the Group’s CR reporting manual, which contains the guidelines for reporting by the local units.
In the case of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, conversion factors based on the energy content and quality of the fuel used are employed. In 2007, the conversion factors were revised, and in doing so, values from prior years were adjusted to the new factors to facilitate comparability. As sources for the calculation of the new factors, the Group used the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (
www.ghgprotocol.org), UNEP Guidelines for Calculating Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Business and Non-Commercial Organizations and IPPC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Inventories (2006). Adjustments were also made to water. In 2007, figures relate only to industrial water and consumption has also been adjusted for earlier years to facilitate comparability.
Figures for emissions of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) are based on measurements at the plants where they occur, but in most cases, VOC emission data is based on mass-balance calculations. The most important key figures are reported in absolute figures and relative to sales to provide a view of trends in these key figures in relation to the expansion of the operations.