Atkore – Atkore Releases 2023 Sustainability Report, Launches ESG Website, and Provides Progress for 2025 Sustainability Targets

EMR Analysis

More information on Atkore: See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on Bill Waltz (President and Chief Executive Officer, Atkore): See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on the 2023 Sustainability report by Atkore: See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

 

More information on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s ‘Equality 100 Award: https://www.hrc.org/resources/cei-equality-100-award + Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index is the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is proud to recognize the 545 businesses that met all the criteria to earn a score of 100 and the designation of being a 2023 “Equality 100 Award: Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion” recipient.

Top-rated CEI employers come from nearly every industry and region of the United States. To earn top ratings, these employers took concrete steps to establish and implement comprehensive policies, benefits and practices that ensure greater equity for LGBTQ+ workers and their families.

 

More information on Great Place to Work® (GPTW): https://www.greatplacetowork.com + We lead the industry with the most rigorous,data-based model for quantifying employee experience: The Great Place to Work Trust Model™. Since 1992, we have surveyed more than 100 million employees around the world and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust..

Our mission is to build a better world by helping organizations become a great place to work FOR ALL. 

5M+: Number of people in the United States working at a Great Place to Work – Certified organization.

More information on Michael C. Bush (Chief Executive Officer, Great Place to Work®): https://www.greatplacetowork.com/michael-c-bush + https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcbush/ 

 

More information on Top Workplaces: https://topworkplaces.com/ + Top Workplaces is based on employee feedback results captured by the Energage Workplace Survey. The research-backed engagement survey is driven by the industry’s most robust benchmarks built on data captured from tens of millions of employees at thousands of organizations across the past 17 years.  

Meet the nation’s leading employer recognition program. Creating a Top Workplace is about more than offering great benefits and vacation time. It’s about putting employees first.

Our employer recognition program helps organizations of all sizes create work experiences that unlock potential and inspire performance.

More information on Energage LLC: https://www.energage.com/ + Making the world a better place to work together.™

Energize + Engage

People spend the majority of their lives at work. Yet for decades, employee engagement in the U.S. has been stagnant at just 31 percent. Two out of three employees wish they were doing something else — and that means organizations are having a tough time acting on their strategy.

But there are some standouts. These energized organizations have double the engagement level of the U.S. average — some even more. We knew if we could find these companies, pinpoint what they’re doing, and then use technology to replicate their success, we could help other organizations achieve the same. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Energage has spent the last 16 years studying these organizations. They’re called Top Workplaces. We know what drives them, and we’ve applied that research to our platform to help you improve the working lives of your employees, create value, and achieve real results.

More information on Eric Rubino (Chief Executive Officer, Energage LLC): https://www.energage.com/leadership/eric-rubino/  + https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-rubino-4667225/ 

 

More information on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): http://www.globalreporting.org/ + GRI is an independent international organization that has pioneered sustainability reporting since 1997. GRI helps businesses and governments worldwide understand and communicate their impact on critical sustainability issues such as climate change, human rights, governance and social well-being. This enables real action to create social, environmental and economic benefits for everyone. The GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are developed with true multi-stakeholder contributions and rooted in the public interest.

 

Sustainability methodologies Accounting Standards Board (SASB): https://www.sasb.org/about/ + SASB Standards guide the disclosure of financially material sustainability information by companies to their investors. Available for 77 industries, the Standards identify the subset of environmental, social, and governance issues most relevant to financial performance in each industry.

Effective August 1, 2022, the Value Reporting Foundation–home to the SASB Standards–consolidated into the IFRS Foundation, which established the first International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). SASB Standards are now under the oversight of the ISSB. The ISSB will build upon the SASB Standards and embed SASB’s industry-based standards development approach into the ISSB’s standards development process. The ISSB actively encourages preparers and investors to continue to provide full support for and to use the SASB Standards until the SASB Standards become the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.

 

More information on Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD): https://www.fsb-tcfd.org/about/ + In 2017, the TCFD released climate-related financial disclosure recommendations designed to help companies provide better information to support informed capital allocation. Our disclosure recommendations are structured around four thematic areas that represent core elements of how companies operate: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The four recommendations are interrelated and supported by 11 recommended disclosures that build out the framework with information that should help investors and others understand how reporting organizations think about and assess climate-related risks and opportunities. Since the publication of the TCFD recommendations, the FSB has asked the Task Force to continue its work—promoting adoption of the TCFD framework, providing further guidance, supporting educational efforts, monitoring climate-related financial disclosure practices in terms of their alignment with the TCFD recommendations, and preparing annual status reports.

 

 

 

 

EMR Additional Notes:

• ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance):
  • Refers to the three key factors when measuring the sustainability and ethical impact of an investment in a business or company. Most socially responsible investors check companies out using ESG criteria to screen investments.
  • ESG metrics are not commonly part of mandatory financial reporting, though companies are increasingly making disclosures in their annual report or in a standalone sustainability report.
  • There is not a standardized approach to the calculation or presentation of different ESG metrics.
    • Environmental: Conservation of the natural world
      • Climate change and carbon emissions
      • Air and water pollution
      • Biodiversity
      • Deforestation
      • Energy efficiency
      • Waste management
      • Water scarcity
      • …
    • Social: Consideration of people & relationships
      • Customer satisfaction
      • Data protection and privacy
      • Gender and diversity
      • Employee engagement
      • Community relations
      • Human rights
      • Labor standards
      • …
    • Governance: Standards for running a company
      • Board composition
      • Audit committee structure
      • Bribery and corruption
      • Executive compensation
      • Lobbying
      • Political contributions
      • Whistleblower schemes
      • …
         
  • Criteria are of increasing interest to companies, their investors and other stakeholders. With growing concern about he ethical status of quoted companies, these standards are the central factors that measure the ethical impact and sustainability of investment in a company.
  • Consequently, ESG analysis considers how companies serve society and how this impacts their current and future performance.
• CSR (Corporate Social Responsability):
  • Framework or business model that helps a company be socially accountable to itself, its stakeholders, and the public.
  • The purpose of CSR is to give back to the community, take part in philanthropic causes, and provide positive social value. Businesses are increasingly turning to CSR to make a difference and build a positive brand around their company.
  • CSR tends to target opinion formers – politicians, pressure groups, media. Sustainability targets the whole value chain – from suppliers to operations to partners to end-consumers.
• CSR vs. ESG:
  • CSR is a company’s framework of sustainability plans and responsible cultural influence, whereas ESG is the assessable outcome concerning a company’s overall sustainability performance.
  • The major difference between them is that CSR is a business model used by individual companies, but ESG is a criteria that investors use to assess a company and determine if they are worth investing in.

 

• Carbon Dioxide (CO2):
  • Primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. Carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), solid waste, trees and other biological materials, and also as a result of certain chemical reactions (e.g., manufacture of cement). Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere (or “sequestered”) when it is absorbed by plants as part of the biological carbon cycle.
• Biogenic Carbon Dioxide (CO2):
  • Carbon Dioxide released as a result of the combustion or decomposition of organic material, that is biomass and its derivatives. Examples include carbon dioxide released during the combustion of wood and biogas generated by decomposition.
  • Biogenic Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) are the same. Scientists differentiate between biogenic carbon (that which is absorbed, stored and emitted by organic matter like soil, trees, plants and grasses) and non-biogenic carbon (that found in all other sources, most notably in fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas).
• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS):
  • CCS involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes, such as steel and cement production, or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation. This carbon is then transported from where it was produced, via ship or in a pipeline, and stored deep underground in geological formations.
  • CCS projects typically target 90 percent efficiency, meaning that 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from the power plant will be captured and stored.
• Decarbonization:
  • Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the use of low carbon power sources, achieving a lower output of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
• Carbon Footprint:
  • There is no universally agreed definition of what a carbon footprint is. A carbon footprint is generally understood to be the total amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are directly or indirectly caused by an individual, organization, product, or service. These emissions are typically measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
  • In 2009, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) published a standard for calculating and reporting corporate carbon footprints. This standard is widely accepted by businesses and other organizations around the world. The GHG Protocol defines a carbon footprint as “the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, directly and indirectly, through its own operations and the value chain.”

 

• Global Warming: Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s climate system observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.
• Global Warming Potential (GWP): 
  • The heat absorbed by any greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, as a multiple of the heat that would be absorbed by the same mass of carbon dioxide (CO2). GWP is 1 for CO2. For other gases it depends on the gas and the time frame.
  • Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e or CO2eq or CO2-e) is calculated from GWP. For any gas, it is the mass of CO2 which would warm the earth as much as the mass of that gas. Thus it provides a common scale for measuring the climate effects of different gases. It is calculated as GWP times mass of the other gas. For example, if a gas has GWP of 100, two tonnes of the gas have CO2e of 200 tonnes.
  • GWP was developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases.
• Greenhouse Gas (GHG):
  • A greenhouse gas is any gaseous compound in the atmosphere that is capable of absorbing infrared radiation, thereby trapping and holding heat in the atmosphere. By increasing the heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases are responsible for the greenhouse effect, which ultimately leads to global warming.
  • The main gases responsible for the greenhouse effect include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor (which all occur naturally), and fluorinated gases (which are synthetic).

• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC):
  • Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are a group of industrial chemicals primarily used for cooling and refrigeration. HFCs were developed to replace stratospheric ozone-depleting substances that are currently being phased out under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
  • Many HFCs are very powerful greenhouse gases and a substantial number are short-lived climate pollutants with a lifetime of between 15 and 29 years in the atmosphere.
• GHG Protocol Corporate Standard Scope 1, 2 and 3: https://ghgprotocol.org/ + The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard provides requirements and guidance for companies and other organizations preparing a corporate-level GHG emissions inventory. Scope 1 and 2 are mandatory to report, whereas scope 3 is voluntary and the hardest to monitor.
  • Scope 1: Direct emissions:
    • Direct emissions from company-owned and controlled resources. In other words, emissions are released into the atmosphere as a direct result of a set of activities, at a firm level. It is divided into four categories:
      • Stationary combustion (e.g fuels, heating sources). All fuels that produce GHG emissions must be included in scope 1.
      • Mobile combustion is all vehicles owned or controlled by a firm, burning fuel (e.g. cars, vans, trucks). The increasing use of “electric” vehicles (EVs), means that some of the organisation fleets could fall into Scope 2 emissions.
      • Fugitive emissions are leaks from greenhouse gases (e.g. refrigeration, air conditioning units). It is important to note that refrigerant gases are a thousand times more dangerous than CO2 emissions. Companies are encouraged to report these emissions.
      • Process emissions are released during industrial processes, and on-site manufacturing (e.g. production of CO2 during cement manufacturing, factory fumes, chemicals).
  • Scope 2: Indirect emissions – owned:
    • Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy, from a utility provider. In other words, all GHG emissions released in the atmosphere, from the consumption of purchased electricity, steam, heat and cooling. For most organisations, electricity will be the unique source of scope 2 emissions. Simply stated, the energy consumed falls into two scopes: Scope 2 covers the electricity consumed by the end-user. Scope 3 covers the energy used by the utilities during transmission and distribution (T&D losses).
  • Scope 3: Indirect emissions – not owned:
    • Indirect emissions – not included in scope 2 – that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions. In other words, emissions are linked to the company’s operations. According to GHG protocol, scope 3 emissions are separated into 15 categories.

 

• LGBTQ+: 
  • Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer or Questioning
  • People often use LGBTQ+ to mean all of the communities included in the “LGBTTTQQIAA”:
    • Lesbian
    • Gay
    • Bisexual
    • Transgender
    • Transsexual
    • 2/Two-Spirit
    • Queer
    • Questioning
    • Intersex
    • Asexual
    • Ally
    • + Pansexual
      + Agender
      + Gender Queer
      + Bigender
      + Gender Variant
      + Pangender
  • LGBTQ is the more commonly used term in the community; possibly because it is more user friendly! You may also hear the terms “Queer Community” or “Rainbow Community” used to describe LGBTQ2+ people. This initialism and the various terms are always evolving so don’t try to memorize the list. The most important thing is to be respectful and use the terms that people prefer.