BASF Report 2021 Management’s Report – Our Sustainability Concept 45 Our Sustainability Concept GRI 102, 103, 203, 304, 412, 413, 415, 416 We implement our corporate purpose – We create chemistry for a sustainable future – by systematically incorporating sustainability into our strategy, our business, and into our assessment, steering and compensation systems. We secure our long-term success with products, solutions and technologies that create value added for the environment, society and the economy. Our strategic approach using renewable raw materials, and ongoing measures to further especially SDG 2 (Zero hunger), SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 6 increase energy and resource efficiency in our production (see (Clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy), At a glance page 126). We use the Sustainable Solution Steering method to SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth), SDG 12 (Responsible improve the sustainability contributions of our product portfolio consumption and production) and SDG 13 (Climate action). To ▪ Sustainability aspects integrated into corporate steering along the value chain (see page 141). To assess the sustainability prioritize these, internal experts assessed the impacts and positive ▪ Targets for climate protection, product portfolio, circular performance of our products and identify solutions with a substantial contributions of our products, our corporate targets and strategic economy, procurement, safety and employees sustainability contribution in the value chain, we regularly reassess action areas. The Value to Society method is used to measure the ▪ Strategic guidelines on stakeholder management and our our product portfolio. We already reached our 2025 sales target for contribution of our activities along the value chain. This assesses our societal engagement Accelerator products in 2021. Consequently, we will update our positive and negative impacts on the environment, society and the product portfolio steering target over the course of 2022. economy (see page 47). Sustainability is at the core of what we do and a driver for growth and value. Analyzing our contributions to sustainability also enables In addition to the climate protection and Accelerator sales targets, We identify key sustainability topics with our comprehensive mate- us to manage risks effectively. We pursue a holistic sustainability we have set ourselves further sustainability goals. A particular focus riality analysis. The graphic on page 46 shows how we assess approach that covers the entire value chain – from our suppliers and is the circular economy due to its strong connection to climate pro- relevant topics. Here, we take into account topics that we have an our own activities to our customers. We have formulated commit- tection. We have defined further targets on water management, impact on, topics that have an impact on us, and topics that our ments for our conduct along the value chain and underpinned these responsible procurement, engaged employees, women in leadership stakeholders consider important to us. The topics identified based with corresponding targets and measures (see page 36). positions, occupational health and safety, and process safety. on these three dimensions of materiality are: climate and energy, health and safety / product stewardship, water, emissions to air Based on our corporate strategy and the global targets derived from We have also set up a project organization to achieve our climate and soil, resource efficiency and waste, biodiversity, human rights, this, we steer the sustainability targets (reduce absolute CO protection targets. The new Net Zero Accelerator unit concentrates employment and diversity. 2 emissions1 by 25% by 2030 compared with baseline 2018 and on implementing and accelerating projects on low-carbon produc- For more information on our materiality analysis, see basf.com/materiality 2 For more information on the metastudy on sustainability trends, see basf.com/sustainability-trends achieve €22 billion in Accelerator sales by 2025) as most important tion technologies, the circular economy and renewable energies. key performance indicators. To this end, we have established the necessary steering mechanisms and control systems at Group level. As a co-founder of the U.N. Global Compact and a recognized Our global activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions include LEAD company, we contribute to the implementation of the United using renewable energies for both electricity and steam production, Nations’ Agenda 2030. Our products, solutions and technologies developing and applying new low-carbon production processes, help to achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 1 The target includes Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Other greenhouse gases are converted into CO equivalents in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. In March 2021, we replaced our previous target of CO -neutral growth until 2030 (baseline 2018: 21.9 million metric tons of CO e) with a new, more ambitious climate protection 2 2 2 target to reduce absolute CO emissions by 25% compared with 2018 (new target: 16.4 million metric tons of CO e). 2 2 2 Accelerator products make a substantial sustainability contribution in the value chain.