Mar 16, 2021

Philips ranked highly by CDP for supplier engagement on climate change

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Not-for-profit environmental impact disclosure organization CDP for the fifth year in a row recognized Philips as one of the highest-ranking companies on its Supplier Engagement Leaderboard – an annual assessment of disclosures about how well individual companies proactively work with their suppliers to ensure sustainability throughout their value chain in terms of climate change mitigation. Based on Philips’ 2020 disclosures, CDP ranked Philips among the top 7% of all companies assessed for supplier engagement on climate change.

Holding suppliers to the highest standards

Philips continuously works with suppliers to reduce their carbon emissions by supporting capability building and contributing to transparency and efficiency in the supply chain. To this end, it established its Supplier Sustainability Performance Program in 2016, after finding that traditional auditing was insufficient to drive sustainable improvements and often led to audit fatigue. The Supplier Sustainability Performance Program holds suppliers to the highest standards via performance-based assessment and classification, and tailor-made improvement plans – an approach that improved the sustainability performance of suppliers who entered the program in 2019 by 36% in the space of a year. More than 200 suppliers currently participate in the program, with additional suppliers added annually.

Improving the lives of 1 million workers in the supply chain

As part of its 5-year Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) targets, Philips is committed to improving the lives of 1 million workers in its supply chain by 2025. Philips takes an end-to-end view of how it works with its supply chain partners, so that all components of the value chain are aligned to deliver world-class sustainable solutions. It is more than simply managing compliance: it is about working together with its supply partners to achieve a positive and lasting impact.

Global recognition for ESG performance

In addition to its high ranking on CDP’s Supplier Engagement Leaderboard for action on climate change, Philips has achieved other widespread recognition for its ESG performance: top positions in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and Sustainalytics rankings; eight consecutive years on the CDP Climate Change A-list; and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) approval of its greenhouse gas reduction targets. In 2020, Philips also achieved second place on Wall Street Journal’s ‘100 Most Sustainably Managed Companies in the World’.

About CDP’s Supplier Engagement Leaderboard

CDP is a global not-for-profit organization that supports companies, cities, states and regions to measure and manage their risks and opportunities on climate change, water security and deforestation. Its annual environmental disclosure and scoring process is widely considered the gold standard of corporate environmental transparency. CDP’s Supplier Engagement Leaderboard provides a rating for how effectively companies are engaging their suppliers on climate change – assessing their performance on supplier engagement using a company’s response to selected questions in the CDP climate change questionnaire on governance, targets, scope 3 emissions, and value chain engagement.