About this report
This report marks the start of a new era.
Over the past few years, we have concentrated
our activities and reporting on seven focus
areas. The work we have done to develop our
new agenda coupled with feedback from our
stakeholders has led us to rethink our approach
to performance and reporting in the future.
Accountability
One thing though will remain unchanged: our printed (and
online) Heineken N.V. Sustainability Report continues to be
a key element of our public accountability (along with our
Heineken N.V. Annual Report, company website and the
Sustainability Data Sheet that is available online). We follow
the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines and our
Sustainability Data Sheet indicates where relevant
information can be found.
Aligning our reports
In this year's report, we have restated our performance data
from 2008 in the sections Energy, Water and Safety in order
to bring the reporting in line with our consolidated Annual
Report. We no longer include performance data on
companies where we only hold a minority interest (see
Appendix 2). As a result of the change to consolidated
reporting, we compare our 2009 results with our restated
2008 results in order to enable a realistic and valid
performance comparison to be made. This adjusted
scope is applied throughout this report, unless specifically
stated otherwise.
In the sections focused on performance against our seven
focus areas, we show our promises from last year's Report
in the section What we said we would do and what we
delivered. In this way, we aim to make it easier for readers
to keep track of our activities by each area.
"Ifeel passionately that our strategy for
the next decade represents an opportunity
for Heineken to do good business and
to do good at the same time."
Sean O'Neill
Group Corporate Relations Director
Our new targets and commitments
You can read about our new sustainability framework and
programmes in the chapter A New Approach for a New
Decade (page 36 and 37) and about our concrete targets
and shorter-term actions in Appendix 1: Brewing a Better
Future.
Best practice, assurance and transparency
One of our core beliefs is that data presented and statements
made by companies in relation to their sustainability
activities should be independently and professionally
assured. So, as always, we have asked our external assurance
provider, KPMG Sustainability, to provide assurance on the
entire report. You will find a summary of their activities
and their conclusion in Appendix 4. During the year, we also
held two formal management review meetings with KPMG
Sustainability. In addition to the work performed by KPMG
Sustainability, our internal auditors have been more involved
with the verification of local performance data than ever
before. This has improved the robustness of the data in line
with our ultimate goal of increasing the level of assurance
from limited to reasonable. We believe that this approach
should be the required standard asked for by stakeholders
and provided by companies.
We realise that our impact occurs at a market level. This year
therefore in order to facilitate greater transparency and
better stakeholder engagement locally, additional to this
Heineken N.V. Sustainability Report, 20 of our main markets
will publish their own sustainability reports. We will make
the local reports available on our Company website.
Overview
Sustainability Report 2009 - Heineken N.V.
