The UN Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, was established to help businesses align their strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. The Ten Principles guide companies towards responsible and sustainable practices, ensuring that their operations have a positive impact on both society and the environment.
Huhtamaki has been a participant in the UN Global Compact Initiative since 2020 and is guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help us embed sustainability in our operations. We use the SDG universal framework to help us focus on sustainability across all three ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) pillars and accelerate our transformation as part of our 2030 Strategy. Though our ambition and progress have been externally validated, we know our journey is far from over and we must continue to work hard to deliver on our 2030 sustainability ambitions and deliver a positive impact.
Charles Héaulmé, our President and CEO talks about how we see the Ten Principles and what actions we are taking to address these important themes:
“We are proud to continue our support for the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact. We commit to safeguarding the Ten Principles for human rights, labor standards, environment, and anti-corruption throughout our operations.
At Huhtamaki, we consider these themes as material issues that are the foundation to protecting food, people and the planet and which we must continuously improve to be considered a global leader in sustainable packaging solutions. We enforce robust policies to ensure compliance with human rights, labor standards, and ethical conduct. Our whistleblowing system, Global Human Rights Policy and Code of Conduct reinforce our commitment to transparency and accountability in both human rights and anti-corruption. We maintain a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption and bribery. Our ambitious 2030 Strategy defines circularity, improvement on our product carbon handprint and operational efficiency as key focus areas which are also instrumental to our innovative sustainable blueloop™ brand. We invest in energy efficiency, renewable energy, reducing water consumption and reducing waste to minimize the footprint of our operations. For our employees, we focus on creating a safe, engaging and inclusive high-performance culture that supports labor standards through continuous improvement, stakeholder engagement and training of our employees on material issues.
By committing to these principles, we have are delivering change for our stakeholders, the environment, and the communities we operate in, globally. We see it as a continuous process, focusing on driving systemic change on these four areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption, creating a positive impact.”