Performance underpins our sustainability strategy and cuts across our People, Products, and Planet pillars. To demonstrate our progress on our targets within these pillars, we must provide consistent and accurate performance data, measured using comprehensive and comparable metrics informed by best-practice standards and frameworks.
In previous years, we have made conscious efforts to report to the UN Global Compact and best-practice standards such as EcoVadis and the GRI. In 2023, we refined our processes and data collection to improve our scores with EcoVadis and report in accordance with the GRI Standards, the highest level of disclosure we have made. By further aligning to these globally recognized standards, we demonstrate our commitment to transparency and improving our sustainability performance.
We also began aligning to incoming sustainability regulatory standards in the EU and the UK in 2023.
We conducted our first climate risk assessment for our global operations to understand the climate-related risks and opportunities as aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The inclusion of climate-related financial disclosures is mandated by law in the UK, and we are compliant with the disclosures requirements. A summary of our top risks and opportunities, alongside our detailed TCFD disclosures, is provided on pages 53-55 of the sustainability report.
We also conducted our first double materiality assessment at the end of 2023 to understand our most material sustainability topics and their associated risks, opportunities, and financial impacts to prepare us to report in line with the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) from FY24.
EcoVadis is a leading provider of sustainability ratings and performance improvement tools to support organizations with advancing sustainability performance across their operations and global supply chains. Companies are assessed through EcoVadis’ platform to benchmark environmental, labor, human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement performance against other organizations in the industry. Venator has been an EcoVadis member since 2019, and we are proud of the sustainability improvements documented year on year, reflecting Venator’s focus on continual improvement.
EcoVadis also provides useful tools to evaluate suppliers across its four pillars. In 2023, the EcoVadis platform supported us in developing our sustainable supply chain procedures and supplier evaluation tools. We created our Sustainable Supplier Assessment, which asks suppliers to detail their sustainability credentials, such as carbon footprint data, labor practices, and business conduct. Following our supplier criticality analysis, we identified 138 vendors required to undertake the Sustainable Supplier Assessment
We are delighted to have received a Gold EcoVadis Sustainability Rating for 2023, scoring 76 out of 100. This was our best performance to date, a 13-point improvement on our 2022 score, and places Venator in the top 5% of organizations rated worldwide. In addition to the enhanced focus on sustainable procurement detailed above, we attribute the increase in this score to the following.
- The publication of our sustainability targets in our 2022 Sustainability Report.
- Our improved sustainability reporting with external assurance.
- The improvement of our sustainable management system, including our policies and procedures.
We are delighted with our Gold award, but we know we can do even better. We aspire to achieve a Platinum EcoVadis rating and are working towards this goal. To do this, we must continue to improve our processes and procedures and demonstrate progress on our sustainability journey through improved KPI reporting, further development of our procurement program, and enhanced GRI reporting.
