Risks
- Increased total carbon footprint from consumer use.
- Increased material cost.
- Not meeting consumer expectations.
- Not meeting regulatory or market requirements.
Materiality
A value chain perspective on sustainability helps us identify how we can best manage our impacts and create optimal value.
This approach makes it easier to identify opportunities, minimize or enhance impacts, and understand boundaries. It also helps us understand how our actions and impacts are interrelated.
The following section illustrates our degree of influence along our value chain, identifies key impacts and how we manage them, and provides examples of the value we create.
Close collaboration between Design, Marketing and R&D enables new products to offer best-in-class performance and consumer experiences.
Read more in our Goal Lead in energy and resource efficient solutions.
Products with leading environmental performance deliver consumer value in line with our business strategy, while reducing negative environmental impacts.
Electrolux has around 1,700 direct suppliers, including many in emerging markets, which must abide by our sustainability requirements. We focus on safeguarding Electrolux standards and developing supplier capacity to improve their sustainability performance, which actively promotes our ambitions throughout our supply chain. This requires careful assessment and supplier selection. Read more in our Goal Drive supply chain sustainability.
Rewarding suppliers that comply with our requirements and sharing our sustainability ambitions with them promotes more sustainable practices, technical improvements and innovation. Promoting universal norms supports human rights and raises environmental, labor and economic standards – particularly in low-cost countries. It also builds trust and reduces business risks.
Electrolux has manufacturing operations in 41 factories around the world and approximately 52,000 employees. Our main focus areas are to reduce our environmental footprint, maintain high ethical standards and working conditions, as well as to have a positive impact in local communities.
Read more in our Goal Be climate neutral and drive clean and resource-efficient operations and Goal Act ethically, lead in diversity and respect human rights.
We benefit society by providing jobs, knowledge transfer and economic opportunities. Positive employee relationships promote competence development, employee wellbeing and job satisfaction. Value is created for Electrolux by retaining talented employees and avoiding financial costs related to accidents.
Electrolux emits more CO2 transporting its goods than through its total energy use in Group operations. Read more in our Goal Drive supply chain sustainability.
We support the trend toward more sustainable transport and encourage our logistics suppliers to further reduce their impacts. This reduces transport-related emissions and our climate impact.
Electrolux annually sells approximately 60 million products in over 120 countries. Energy and performance labeling, and campaigns allow us to raise consumer awareness on product efficiency. However, our ability to influence is limited by the fact that the majority of our sales are made through retail customers that sell our products to consumers.
Read more in our Goal Lead in energy and resource efficient solutions. We also work to help consumers reduce their sustainability impacts while interacting with our products. Read more in our Goals Make healthy and sustainable eating the preferred choice, Make clothes last twice as long with half the environmental impact and Make the home a healthier place to thrive in, with half the carbon footprint.
Promoting transparency and our sustainable product offering contributes to retailer sustainability goals, strengthens our brands and builds consumer loyalty. As sales of most resource efficient products demonstrate, an efficient product offering is a profitable strategy.
As the main environmental impacts of our products occur during their use, product efficiency is a top priority. Read more in our Goal Lead in energy and resource efficient solutions. We also work actively to positively influence our consumers to reduce their own sustainability impact while interacting with our products. Read more in our Goals Make healthy and sustainable eating the preferred choice, Make clothes last twice as long with half the environmental impact and Make the home a healthier place to thrive in, with half the carbon footprint.
Appliances deliver social benefits that many take for granted – such as food conservation, contributing to a healthier home environment, freeing up time from household chores, and facilitating equal opportunities – which are particularly important in emerging markets. Providing efficient products, raising consumer awareness and increasing appliance connectivity can help counter rising global CO2 emissions due to the increasing use of appliances, while making products more affordable.
We promote proper recycling as part of our producer responsibility. In Europe, where the most comprehensive producer responsibility legislation exists, 80% of the materials (by total volume) from collected large appliances must be recovered (70% for small appliances).
Building resource efficient and closed-loop systems help reduce environmental impact and overall resource consumption. Innovative designs that allow material reuse saves money and energy, and increases consumer trust in our brands.