Waiblingen, 5/25/2023 | Company press release
STIHL reduces carbon emissions and publishes 2022 Sustainability Report
STIHL significantly reduced its direct carbon emissions (scope 1 and 2) in the past year compared to the previous twelve months. As detailed in the family-owned company’s 2022 Sustainability Report, which it published on May 25, the 43 percent drop was primarily due to the conversion of STIHL production companies worldwide to green electricity.
STIHL has launched a variety of initiatives to ensure it meets its responsibility in terms of sustainability. Switching to green electricity is a first step in this process. Among other measures, by 2030 STIHL intends to reduce the consumption of natural gas and oil by 40 percent company-wide compared to 2019. Worldwide, more than 100 individual measures have been identified to this end, and these particularly involve technological innovations. To also reduce emissions from upstream and downstream value chains (scope 3), product environmental footprints have been determined for the first product groups. This means the ecological footprint of each lifecycle phase is ascertained in carbon equivalents. As far as possible, the footprints of the entire product portfolio are to be analyzed in the near future and the results will be included in the development process.
Closed-loop products and reduced plastic
In line with the goal of circularity, the company aims to enhance its products to make them as recyclable as possible. To this end, it launched a pilot project in late 2022 to investigate the potential of a fully recyclable clearing saw, as an example product. Projects to reduce plastic packaging and carbon emissions have also been initiated. One of these focuses on converting mowing head packaging from plastic to solid board and corrugated fiberboard, which could help save more than 100 metric tons of plastic by the end of 2023.
The STIHL 2022 Sustainability Report was prepared in accordance with the Sustainability Reporting Standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and is available online.
Sustainable supply chains
With sustainability also set to play a pivotal role in supplier management going forward, STIHL has expanded the central purchasing criteria of price, quality, and logistics to include sustainability-oriented aspects. One of the additional measures is a risk exposure analysis of all suppliers It classifies suppliers into various risk categories and serves as the basis for required preventive measures. In addition, STIHL has introduced a self-evaluation platform via which suppliers can be reviewed to check conformity with the relevant sustainability and compliance standards. For greater transparency and sustainability, STIHL has also started analyzing potentially critical supply chains in their entirety, with magnesium, cobalt, and textiles currently under review.
“By means of our sustainability activities, we hope to make a positive contribution to climate protection, work in a more resource-efficient manner, and continue ensuring fair working conditions in order to make it easier for people to work in and with nature in future too,” said Dr. Michael Prochaska, STIHL Executive Board Member for Human Resources and Legal Affairs, who is also responsible for sustainability.
All activities, as well as the sustainability strategy and its targets, are outlined in the STIHL 2022 Sustainability Report. The online version is available at https://nachhaltigkeitsbericht.stihl.de/2022.
