All expect our Suppliers to work systematically with risk assessments and risk management in connection with any change that potentially could lead to environmental impact.

The precautionary approach means focusing on prevention rather than remediation. It is more cost-effective to take early action to ensure that environmental damage does not occur.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Do we have a procedure to assess risks before we carry out any change in our processes, products or equipment?
• Do we include environmental aspects at an early stage in projects like large maintenance stops, construction, expansion or moving to a new facility?
• Do we include environmental aspects and assess the risks in our product or process design?

(Read more: UN Global Compact Principle 7)

We expect our Suppliers to uphold legitimacy in society through meeting the increasing demands for refined environmentally sustainable practices.

Depending on what products or services the company provides, initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility could be to

• Make use of life cycle assessments
• Initiate programmes with clear objectives to improve environmental performance beyond legal compliance
• Work with product design and co-operate with suppliers to improve the environmental performance throughout the value chain

Questions to ask yourself:

• Do we have control programs in place to monitor, minmise and report on our environmental performance; like air emissions, water discharges, waste generation, soil contamination etc?
• Do we have programmes in place to monitor, minimise and report the use of resources; like water, raw materials, energy and chemicals?
• Do we work against quantified targets to improve our environmental performance?

(Read more: UN Global Compact Principle 8)

We expect our Suppliers to strive towards cleaner production processes, less contaminants, less residues and wastes, less use of raw materials and more reuse and recycling. This includes well monitored and managed processes with know-how and well maintained equipment.

Using ‘best available technique’ is beneficial both for the environment and the competitiveness as it reduces costs and minimises the risk of environmental disasters and business disruptions.

Questions to ask yourself:

• When renewing equipment, do we include the improved environmental impact when we decide technology and capacity?
• When designing our maintenance programmes do we set aside enough resources to optimise the environmental performance of existing equipment?
• Do we train our employees sufficiently to run our processes with optimised environmental performance?

(Read more: UN Global Compact Principle 9)