Aug 21, 2019

Philips ranks #1 on Fortune’s Change the World Sustainability All Stars list

Estimated reading time: 3-5 minutes

Philips has topped Fortune’s inaugural Sustainability All Stars list, which spotlights the top ten global brands for their action on sustainability. With its number-one position on the list, Philips is recognized for its environmental innovation, resource use and efforts to limit emissions.

“This is a great recognition of the continuous efforts we are making to deeply embed sustainability in our solutions and the way we do business with customers and suppliers,” said Robert Metzke, Philips’ Global Head of Sustainability. “Philips has fully aligned its strategy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), because we believe that creating sustainable value for our customers and society are the ultimate and only source of lasting economic growth.”

The Sustainability All Stars list is a sub-category of Fortune’s 2019 Change the World list, where Philips came in at #43.

Embracing sustainability

As a global leader in health technology, Philips’ goal is to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2030, including 400 million people in underserved communities. Solidly aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Philips’ Healthy people, sustainable planet program has three focus areas: access to care for the underserved (SDG3: healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages); circular economy and eco-design (SDG12: sustainable use of materials); and sustainable use of energy, emissions reduction and renewable energy (SDG13: action to combat climate change and its impacts).

Access to care

Through digital innovation and new business and partnership models, Philips aims to improve access to care in both developed and emerging economies. Examples include its Tele-ICU (Tele-Intensive Care Unit) and Digital Pathology solutions, both of which facilitate the efficient allocation of scarce clinical expertise through virtual care networks enabled by remote monitoring, tele-diagnostics and clinical collaboration. Another example is the Philips Community Life Centers program, which provides quality care at primary care level in some of the world’s most challenging regions, many of which lack even the most basic healthcare services.

Carbon neutrality

Next to its ambition to enable Universal Health Coverage, Philips is committed to becoming fully carbon neutral in its own operations, sourcing all its electricity from 100% renewable energy sources by 2020. All its US operations were powered by renewable electricity from the Los Mirasoles windfarm in 2018. In addition, the Krammer and Bouwdokken windfarms in the Dutch province of Zeeland have now started powering all of Philips’ operations in the Netherlands. Together, these three windfarms now supply more than half of the company’s global electricity demand.

Philips became the first health technology company in the world to have its CO2 emission targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a collaboration between the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature aimed at driving ambitious corporate climate action.

Circular economy

Philips also set ambitious circular economy goals supporting a global shift from today’s linear ‘take-make-dispose’ model, in which less than 10% of the raw material is recycled, to a circular ‘make-use-return’ paradigm. Earlier this year, Philips pledged to take back and repurpose all the large medical systems that its customers are prepared to return to it by 2020. This means that Philips will actively pursue the trade-in of equipment such as MRI, CT and Interventional X-ray systems and take full control to ensure that all traded-in materials are repurposed in a responsible way. Furthermore, Philips aims to deliver 15% of total revenues from circular solutions by 2020.