18 OPERATIONAL REVIEW FTSE4Good Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes iiAiif i/crf REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD HEINEKEN N.V. ANNUAL REPORT 2008 Sustainability Heineken is committed to sustainable business practices as part of a long-term strategic framework that looks to act beyond the financial year. We are aware of the important role we play in society and in those communities in which we operate. We therefore seek to run our business in a responsible way, focusing on areas where we can make a positive difference by engaging with stakeholders at a local as well as international level. We have focused our thinking and our actions around areas where we can have a real impact on our business environment and where the changing business environment has a real impact on us. These focus areas are: Energy: consumption and C02 emission Water: consumption, waste water and discharge Safety: of our employees and our installations Agriculture: quality and availability of raw materials Supply chain responsibility Responsible beer consumption Impact on developing markets. In 2008, we began an internal review of all focus areas with the aim of establishing a clear longer-term vision. We have asked our key stakeholders to provide feedback, which we will use as input to our internal discussions about the future sustainability agenda. We will conclude this process in 2009. At the same time, good progress has been made in the promotion of Responsible Beer Consumption. The number of partnerships we have established to combat alcohol abuse has quadrupled since 2007. As part of these efforts we launched the interactive international media campaign (www.knowthesigns.com). Finally, we re-issued our Rules for Responsible Commercial Communication and increased our employee training and awareness. We also continued the successful roll-out of our Supplier Code. This has now been completed on a central level, in Austria, Greece and Poland, whilst implementation in all markets in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe has commenced. This includes the design of a new mandatory audit tool which measures our suppliers' compliance with the principles of the Code. In 2008, we conducted a workshop on energy and climate, aimed at significantly reducing our impact. At the same time, we continued to invest in the energy efficiency of our production facilities and to meet the target we have set of 15 per cent energy efficiency improvements by 2010 compared with 2002. We are pleased that in 2008 our ongoing sustainability efforts were recognised by our continued inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (first within our global industry category) and through our membership of the FTSE4Good Index. Fleineken does not presume to have the answers to all the questions surrounding sustainability but we are always learning from other companies and organisations such as the UN Global Compact, which play an important role in bringing together companies that take their future and the future of our planet seriously.

Jaarverslagen en Personeelsbladen Heineken

Jaarverslagen | 2008 | | pagina 25