Smart science to improve lives™
Changing environment

Accelerating towards a low-carbon future

Delivering greater impact

We are reducing our emissions in line with our verified SBT and working to deliver carbon saving in-use benefits throughout our supply chain.

Growing consumer demand for sustainable ingredients means our customers require transparency and the ability to deliver products with proven, substantiated claims on their environmental footprint, including carbon. Delivery against our decarbonisation roadmaps, through the switch to alternative energy sources and technology transformation, alongside the transition away from fossil towards an increasingly bio-based portfolio of ingredients, allows us to demonstrate quantifiable carbon reductions at a product level, to support our customers in meeting these consumer expectations. Developing products which offer benefits in use, including avoiding emissions, also support customers and consumers in living more sustainably and reducing their carbon footprint.

By becoming Climate Positive we will directly contribute towards the following UN SDG targets: 

SDG 7.2, SDG 7.3, SDG 9.4, SDG 12.2, SDG 13.2, SDG 17

Our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions are externally verified and we received reasonable verification in 2021, the highest level of external verification.

Climate Positive: our world in 2030

2023 Sustainability Impact Report

SR
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Our progress

We will enable the transition to a low carbon economy. We will be Climate Positive, working closely with our customers to develop products that offer carbon saving benefits in use.

Our ingredients offer many sustainability benefits in use, including helping our customers and their consumers to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. Our Carbon Cover target means that by 2030 the use of our products will avoid four times the carbon emissions associated with our business.

At the end of 2023, our carbon cover ratio was 1.05:1 – the ratio of avoided emissions through the use of our ingredients to our scope 1, 2 and upstream scope 3 emissions. This target has been affected by the divestment of our PTIC businesses, as several of our initiatives sat within that part of the business. However, our level of ambition remains unchanged. 

Downstream GHG emissions

Our carbon cover target aims to support customers in avoiding downstream emissions. The concept of avoided emissions is defined by the GHG Protocol as “emission reductions which occur outside of a product's lifecycle or value chain, but as a result of the use of the product” and often referred to as scope 4. Avoided emissions will be an important part of the net zero transition.

We have started thinking beyond our existing avoided emissions case studies to consider remaining downstream scope 3 emissions associated with the use of our ingredients and how further savings can be made. In better understanding and quantifying emissions in the three downstream scope 3 categories, we will collaborate with customers to identify innovative ways to reduce our shared downstream scope 3 emissions from today’s baseline.

For example, through:
• Consumer education and engagement to reduce energy consumption in use
• Supplying our ingredient in an alternative form, reducing customer processing emissions
• New product development to satisfy an unmet need, reducing use-phase emissions

Measuring the emissions associated with the end-of-life of used products will allow us to quantify, and our customers to realise, the benefits of our move to bio-based ingredients, avoiding the release of additional fossil carbon into the atmosphere. We have developed an industry-leading downstream Scope 3 inventory to understand our hotspots and impacts, enabling us to support our customers as they work towards becoming Net Zero (see page 11 of SIR 2023).

Read more about sustainability being at the heart of what we do:

Woman working with croda ingredients in lab

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