Demant introduces Sustain to further progress on climate targets
A Supplier Engagement Programme for Demant’s Hearing Aids business area, Sustain, was launched in 2024 with the initial objective of working together with direct suppliers in Hearing Aids to deliver on Demant’s climate targets. Suppliers are key in Demant’s decarbonisation journey as the majority of its greenhouse gas emissions [95%] come from the supply chain.
Launched and rolled out in 2024, Sustain aims to improve the collection of greenhouse emissions data from suppliers, enabling action to achieve Demant’s Scope 3 climate target.
While the long-term objective is to engage 100% of Hearing Aids’ direct suppliers, a key group representing 65% of the business area’s spend has already been onboarded. Several workshops have been conducted to introduce the programme and to align expectations and responsibilities, and suppliers have been guided through a training process tailored to their different levels of maturity.
The initiative requires extensive collaboration and it is a long-term effort that involves continually onboarding new suppliers, gathering data and monitoring decarbonisation progress to implement further actions.
Demant’s climate targets: the starting point for a broader programme
In 2023,
Demant’s climate targets were approved by the Science Base Targets initiative (SBTi). Among other targets, the Group committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all scopes with 46% by 2030 with 2019 as baseline. These emissions were calculated using a spend-based approach, a common first step in a company’s scope 3 journey that, however, only reflected the company’s growth and didn’t allow Demant to track the effectiveness of its mitigation actions. By working closely with suppliers through the Sustain programme, the aim is to collect supplier-specific CO2e data.
Sustain will evolve to address broader goals to ensure the protection of human rights and include compliance with essential new regulations and directives, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).