Sustainability award for STEMA

How sustainable are we? The EcoVadis award explained

Sustainability is increasingly becoming one of the key differentiating factors in the market. Executives need to keep an eye on the environmental, social and ethical impacts of their company's operations and its entire value chain while also taking risks into account when making business decisions and in terms of their business relationships. Sustainability assessments can represent a good starting point here.

In June 2024, STEMA received the "Committed" badge from the EcoVadis sustainability assessment platform. This badge is awarded to companies that adopt a structured and proactive approach towards sustainability, offer guidelines and measurable activities on key topics, and provide basic reporting on their activities and performance indicators. Although the badge does not constitute a certification of a company, its products or services, the assessment can nevertheless

• be used as a qualification criterion for new suppliers.
• be considered as part of a bid for a new business,
• be used as a measure of potential business risks or
• be used to compare performance as part of an annual audit.

How sustainability is assessed

A high-quality sustainability management system is imperative to document and monitor the implementation of sustainability goals. EcoVadis therefore measures the quality of a company's sustainability management system using three management levels and seven indicators in order to assess the sustainability of a company:

• Introduction of suitable guidelines
  • Corporate policy/management, targets, goals
  • Support of external sustainability initiatives and principles
• Implementation of specific measures
  • Implemented actions, such as further training programmes
  • Certifications, labels, audits
  • Degree of implementation of certificates and actions
• Reporting of the results
  • Information on quality, transparency and current key performance indicators
  • Viewpoints of stakeholders

The assessment is based on international sustainability standards and takes account of 21 topics in the areas of the environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. These include: Energy consumption, air pollution, the product life cycle, working conditions, health and safety of employees, equality, inclusion, corruption as well as the environmental and social practices of suppliers.

The Assessment Process

1.Internal evidence documents

Companies provide information about their sustainability management system through a questionnaire. In order to verify this, they must submit documents such as sustainability reports, codes of conduct, manuals, certificates, CSR charters from suppliers, and third-party site audits.

For instance, STEMA can demonstrate that:

• an energy audit has been conducted.
• regular training courses are held on work processes relating to the labelling, storage, handling and transport of hazardous goods.
• general mandatory health checks are offered to employees.
• measures have been introduced to advise customers concerning their personal data.
• social or ecological clauses are integrated within the supplier contracts.

2.Stakeholder assessment

In addition to the company's internal documents, external sources such as trade unions, international organisations, local authorities, auditors, specialist press and sustainability networks are also integrated within the assessment.

3.Final assessment

All the information is collated and analysed. Each sustainability topic relevant to the company is now assessed based on the management indicators. A score ranging from 0 to 100 is awarded for each indicator.

This has resulted in Stema now being awarded the "Committed" badge. But of course, this is not the end of the story. STEMA will make use of this assessment, identify potential areas of improvement and develop and implement further measures.

By the way: STEMA has long been committed towards sustainability. STEMA already took part in the Dresden environmental consulting and certification programme "ÖKOPROFIT” a few years ago. The participating companies collaborated to develop customised solutions to reduce their ecological footprint and save money at the same time. At that time, STEMA equipped all their manufacturing facilities with LED technology and installed a heat recovery system on the air compressor, among other things. This resulted in a saving of 150,000 kilowatt hours and € 27,000 in the 2016/17 financial year. STEMA was awarded a certificate for its achievements.