Sustainability

Corporate Social Responsibility

Perpetual Next takes its corporate social responsibility very seriously. We commit to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives that are relevant and valuable to our business, our people and society.

In addition, we are devoted to 7 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), two of which underly our organisation's very existence. We are on track to certify ourselves as a B Corporation.

The ESG guidelines to which we are committed

1.   Environment

  • Use only feedstock with most stringent certified sustainability criteria like: Better Biomass NTA8080, Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP).
  • Maximize efficient use by applying heat and optionally power production.
  • Apply Best Available Technologies (BAT) at production to minimize impact.

2.   Social

  • Health and safety –with a focus on high-risk incidents–prevention is a top priority.
  • Providing a safe environment to protect all employees and stakeholders from COVID-19, such as flexible home policy.
  • Proactively engage with and give back to communities in which we operate.

3. Governance

  • Operate with high ethical standards and a robust policy framework (e.g., inclusion and exclusion principles for our assets and feedstock procurement).
  • Transitioning to ESG criteria into our decision-making, processes and risk management.
  • Adopt appropriate ESG-related memberships to ensure par level policies and reporting.

Sustainable Development Goals

Business cannot thrive in a world facing challenges among which are depletion of the earth’s resources, climate change, culture of waste and slow deployment of broad acceptable alternatives. We see our contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) as intertwined with our business strategy. Through our business operations, we contribute to making the world a cleaner, healthier, and safer place, and our work on the SDGs supports that same mission.

SDG's

SDG 3

Good Health and Well-being

As to minimize the impact of the hazardous industrial environment, our health and safety standards are designed to promote a safe and secure working environment and follow national legislation in the countries where we are operational. Additionally, we strive for minimizing our carbon footprint and promote our suppliers to do so as well.

SDG 9

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

This goal reflects the principle that technological progress is the foundation of efforts to achieve the environmental objectives. Our concrete action on this point is the continued development of an innovative carbonisation technology. This is a technology which transforms all the different forms of woody biomass into a standard carbon form that serves as a source material for other biobased process in the chemical industry.

SDG 11

Sustainable Cities and Communities

Cities account for about 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions and over 60% of resource use. Making cities and communities inclusive, resilient and sustainable is therefore an important goal that Perpetual Next contributes to. We focus on supplying renewable heat and power to serve essential utility needs. By using local residual waste streams to fuel our facilities, we contribute to the efficient management of municipal waste and contribute to improved air quality as a result of less reliance on highly polluting fossil fuels.

SDG 12

Responsible Consumption and Production

This goal is intrinsic to our business, since we reduce waste generation through reuse and repurpose. Our concrete actions are laid down in our sustainable sourcing policy. We use only feedstock that is in line with the stringent certified sustainability criteria like Better Biomass/NTA8080, FSC, PEFC and Sustainable Biomass Program.

SDG 13 & 7

Climate Action & Affordable and Clean Energy

These two goals are at the core of our business activities. We increase the share of renewable energy by offering renewable heat, power, and carbon as well as biogas, biomethane and green gas to our customers. This contributes to increasing this clean energy share and adds to greening our economy at large.

SDG 15

Life on Land

Firstly, we consider the risks to people and planet linked to Perpetual’s value chain – so for a minimisation of our negative impact. We take action to decrease the potential negative impact of biobased feedstock by promoting sustainable forestry. A campaign to replant 1 million trees in various European countries has been initiated and will be executed from 2021 onwards.