RELEX Environmental Policy
August 26, 2024| Policy owner | Svante Göthe, Head of Sustainability |
| Policy sponsor | Johanna Småros, Co-founder & Chief Sustainability Officer |
| Effective date | 20 June 2024 |
| Last approved | 20 June 2024 by the Leadership team |
Scope
The Environmental Policy (this “Policy”) applies to all employees of Retail Logistics Excellence – RELEX Oy and its subsidiaries (collective “RELEX Solutions”, the “Company”, “we”, or “our”, as applicable). This policy’s scope affects our company’s internal operations across all functions and our value chain including suppliers and customers.
Purpose
The Environmental Policy was created to minimize negative environmental impacts in our internal operations and our value chain. Together with our Sustainable Procurement policy, it outlines our commitments to environmental responsibility.
Allocation of responsibilities
RELEX has ensured a C-level commitment to environmental responsibility. The message of RELEX’s CEO on sustainability is communicated annually in the Sustainability Report. The Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of Sustainability are responsible for setting and reviewing the environmental objectives and targets, monitoring the implementation of the environmental policy guidelines across the organization. In addition, our sustainability reporting and targets are reviewed by the Board of Directors.
Further responsibilities for implementing the policy guidelines are distributed as follows. The VP of Cloud Platform is responsible for public cloud and co-location data centers including related services like servers and storage systems. The VP of IT has global responsibility for internal IT devices and their lifecycle. Global Workplace Lead is responsible for RELEX’s office spaces globally including sustainability targets of the office spaces and category-related procurement. The function leads are responsible for the implementation of responsible travel guidelines within their function. The Head of Procurement is responsible for the implementation of sustainable procurement guidelines. The Head of Sustainability is responsible for the projects and initiatives to increase sustainability awareness and knowledge on this topic among RELEX employees and externally.
Mechanism for policy review
This Environmental Policy is reviewed annually by the Policy owner and approved by the Leadership team. Next review is in June 2025.
Contents
- Policy objectives and commitments
- Key environmental target and focus areas
- Carbon footprint and use of energy
- Waste in RELEX’s operations and lifecycle management
- Environmental advocacy and awareness in our value chain
1. Policy objectives and commitments
At RELEX, we are proud to be driving a positive impact by helping our customers reduce their carbon footprints. Based on our estimates, the yearly positive environmental impact is over 950 000 tons CO2e, calculated on food waste prevention in retail and wholesale alone. That does not mean that we can overlook the impacts of our own operations, which in 2023 caused 4281 tons of CO2e. For details, please see our Sustainability Report 2024. Our emissions are calculated and verified by a third party. We are currently preparing our sustainability statement using the GRI reporting standards. To comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), we will switch to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in 2025.
We are committed to minimizing our negative environmental impacts, both in our internal operations and in our value chain. This policy sets our environmental targets, and lists the actions and guidelines that we, as a company and individuals, are undertaking to reach these.
RELEX is committed to annually disclosing its sustainability information to Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and UN Communication on Progress (Global Compact). We also complete EcoVadis assessment annually to receive an independent rating for our sustainability efforts.
With our efforts to reduce RELEX’s environmental impact and increase positive influence (carbon handprint and awareness), we support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and contribute to the goal #12-3 on reduction of food waste and goal #13 on climate action.
2. Key environmental target and focus areas
As we are in a rapid growth stage, reducing absolute emissions is practically impossible. Therefore, our emission intensity (metric tons of CO2e / M€ revenue) is a more suitable metric to track. Our key target is to reduce the emission intensity by 5% on a yearly basis and we are happy to say that we are on track. In 2023 our emission intensity decreased by 14% compared to 2022.
To formalize our target setting, we are evaluating the Science Based Targets Initiative with the ambition of committing to setting science-based targets in late 2024. In addition to taking action to avoid and minimize our emissions, we utilize high-quality carbon offset credits as an instrument for reducing our environmental footprint.
The Policy outlines concrete objectives and targets and the measures in place for us to reach them. The policy tackles three focus areas: 1) carbon emissions and energy use, 2) waste including electronic and office waste, and 3) environmental awareness in our value chain.
These focus areas have been selected because of conducting the carbon footprint inventory and looking into the main environmental issues of our industry.
3. Carbon footprint and use of energy
As a software company, we rely on the use of energy to develop and offer our products and services to our clients. This section also addresses the largest source of our company’s emissions – business travel.
3.1 Cloud computing
Our objective is to minimize the climate impact of our SaaS offering by increasing the use of renewable energy for our software product and engaging with our cloud infrastructure providers for adopting more environmentally friendly practices. We have already reached the aim of 100% renewable energy use by RELEX Solutions in co-location data centers and our target is to maintain this level. Our servers meet EnergyStar / EU 2019/424 requirements.
We are committed to using co-location data center service providers that have selected renewable energy or buy energy attribute certificates or, if such suitable vendors cannot be identified in a specific geographical area, purchasing the energy attribute certificates corresponding to our energy consumption in that data center ourselves and working with the data center service provider to support them in increasing their use of renewable energy. Through this, we have reached 100% renewable energy use by RELEX Solutions in co-location data centers.
Our public cloud infrastructure providers are consistently increasing their use of renewable energy, some of them having reached 100% already, and all are already currently reporting their carbon footprints and water use and have goals and roadmaps to reduce their climate impact.
We also recognize that we can reduce cloud energy consumption and thus emissions by making sure we utilize cloud resources in an optimal way. In our Technology function we are increasingly incorporating GreenOps and FinOps practices to achieve both environmental and financial benefits. Last year alone, our emission intensity in our biggest public cloud provider declined by 24%, with the help of cloud optimization actions.
3.2 Business travel
Our objective is to foster a responsible travel culture among the RELEX employees. In 2023, business travel stood for 56% of our carbon footprint. It is our most significant emission category, and at the same time the category which individual RELEXians can influence the most. To reduce the amount of travelling, especially air traveling, we have published internal guidelines for business travel.
We encourage all RELEXians to be thoughtful when it comes to business traveling. We acknowledge that while traveling can often be replaced by online meetings, sometimes face-to-face interactions are necessary. Traveling on-site for very short meetings should be avoided. If there is a true need for travel, it is recommended to make the most of the business trip, by e.g. booking several meetings or visiting the local office to connect with other RELEXians. The train should be chosen over air travel whenever feasible. Often air travel is the only feasible option, but when booking flights, direct flights should be favored over stopover flights.
In addition, we acknowledge that internal events such as department kickoffs form a substantial part of our business travel emissions. The guiding principle is that events should be hosted where most participants are located. When organizing events from most/all RELEX geographies, the following aspects should be considered:
- The destination should be on the continent where most of the participants are from
- The destination should have good flight accessibility so that the participants can arrive with direct flights
3.3 Office commute and use of office spaces
Our objective is to reduce our emissions from employee commuting and from our use of office spaces. In addition to our supporting hybrid and even fully remote work, we aim to further reduce emissions by emphasizing 1) commuting-friendly locations, 2) energy-efficient buildings demonstrated by certificates (LEED and Breeam), and 3) use of renewable energy in our assessment of new own office space leases.
Our aim is to relocate our largest by employee count office, the RELEX Solutions headquarters, to a more energy-efficient and accessible location by 2027. The new RELEX Solutions headquarters in Espoo, Finland with an estimated completion date in 2026, is aimed to be a flagship project for sustainable office design. Key tenets of this project are 1) salvaging elements of the previous existing building that can be used in the new building from a usability, safety, and financial point of view, 2) designing the office for flexible use that also serves the local community, 3) leveraging existing furniture and opting for reusing or using upcycled furniture when possible from a usability and availability point of view, and 4) energy-efficiency (LEED Platinum). This approach requires more work from our staff and extensive collaboration with our design, furnishing, and real estate partners, but it is a commitment we see very much worthwhile. We are also committed to sharing information and lessons learned from this unique project, with the goal of helping and inspiring other businesses to take similar steps.
We choose renewable electricity in all locations where we as the tenants have this opportunity to do so. In cases where we don’t, we primarily negotiate with the landlords and aim to leverage them into choosing renewable electricity sources, and secondly purchase Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs). We have already reached our target that 100% of RELEXians work in offices where we have secured renewable electricity and are committed to keeping it this way.
To minimize unnecessary commutes, RELEX supports hybrid work and provides support for employees that choose to work from home. We provide IT equipment and home office furniture to help our employees create an ergonomic work-from-home environment.
4. Waste in RELEX’s operations and lifecycle management
In our operations, waste is primarily generated from two sources: IT hardware and equipment that reaches its end of life and office waste. This section outlines our commitments to properly manage the waste generated in these two categories.
4.1 Lifecycle management of IT equipment
Our goal is to extend the lifecycle of electronic products and ensure their proper end-of-use and end-of-life treatment. To achieve this goal, we adopted a leasing scheme for our personal IT equipment (laptops, mobile phones, monitors). For IT equipment, expanding product lifecycles and ensuring proper end-of-life treatment are key. Our procurement and IT departments continuously assess the most appropriate lease period lengths for different types of leased equipment to find the right balance between sustainability and performance. For example, in 2023, we updated our mobile phone leasing lifecycles from two to three years.
Leased equipment is typically returned to the leasing company after the leasing period, except when equipment is purchased for extended use. For end-of-life purchased goods, Vendor Asset Resale & Recovery (ARR) services are used. Our leasing and equipment partners either resell or reuse the returned equipment or recycle it responsibly in accordance with local regulations.
We also handle the servers’ end-of-life recycling responsibly/according to WEEE Directive 2012/19/EU standards.
4.2 Recycling
Our objective is to foster waste recycling practices among RELEX’s employees in all our offices. We have already reached a very good level and our goal is to maintain this level. In 2023, we have made further improvements in our offices worldwide, introducing recycling bins in offices that did not yet meet local standards, and educating and informing our employees on proper recycling practices. Our offices have only reusable dishware and cutlery in use.
Our selection of RELEX’s merchandise products includes items made from recycled cotton and plastic. In addition, many of our offices have during 2023 introduced schemes for swapping items that the employees no longer use, such as clothing, books, and toys.
Our objective is to foster internal business practices that enable us to work efficiently while being environmentally friendly. To reduce use of paper, RELEX adopted paper-free business practices which rely on cloud document management and e-signature tools. The environmental benefits from using these tools (for example, DocuSign) are associated with reduced paper use in our business transactions and opportunity to influence paper usage habits over time.
5. Environmental advocacy and awareness in our value chain
We are supporting our clients in their sustainability journey by offering a solution that can prevent food waste in our clients’ supply chains. In addition, we work on establishing dialogue with our value chain partners to increase awareness of environmental sustainability and together build capacity for impactful improvements.
5.1 Carbon handprint
For years, RELEX has helped its customers to reduce waste throughout the supply chain. This is achieved through more accurate planning of demand, inventory, space, promotions and manufacturing, and through information sharing across the supply chain. In addition to reducing waste, better supply chain planning leads to reduced transport emissions.
It is estimated that 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste alone, and we are very proud of the results we have achieved in reducing these emissions. Our solution is already helping hundreds of food retailers and wholesale companies reduce their food waste by up to 40%. Even a 15% reduction across our customer base means preventing over 280 000 000 kilograms of food waste on a yearly basis. That translates to a carbon handprint equivalent to 950 000 metric tons of CO2 equivalents in 2023.
Together with our customers, we can play a big part in mitigating climate change, and we are thus committed to continuously developing our solutions to innovate new ways of decarbonizing the supply chains of our customers, across all industries.
5.2 Sustainable procurement
In 2024, our goal is to build capacity by assessing the level of ESG reporting, ESG certificates, social and climate goals of our key vendors. We will use this information to set new and revisit existing development targets from 2025 and onwards.
With an objective to promote the sustainable procurement practices and engage with our suppliers on sustainability topics, we have established regular meeting cadences with our key vendors and will from 2024 onwards include sustainability as an agenda topic in these meetings. The meetings are held at least once per annum and as frequently as needed. The Head of Procurement is responsible for conducting the vendor assessment and ensures that sustainable development topics are discussed in the meetings and that they are properly archived.
Our standalone Sustainable Procurement Policy offers guidance and sets objectives and targets for improving RELEX sustainability performance in procurement and supplier engagement.
5.3 Training RELEX’s employees on environmental responsibility
In 2024, we introduced a mandatory introductory course on sustainability for all new employees with an objective to increase internal awareness of sustainability issues among the RELEXians. This basic course introduces new employees with RELEX’s carbon handprint and major carbon footprint categories. It demands our new employees familiarize themselves with the Environmental Policy. In addition, our digital platform RELEX Skills Academy offers a comprehensive sustainability course for more in-depth knowledge on the subject.
We expect all our employees to read and comply with the Environmental Policy as part of the bi-annual company-wide mandatory Business Ethics certification course. Our target is to maintain a 100% compliance rate among our employees with the Environmental policy.