assured 2011
Reporting Profile
Sustainable Development Report 2011
Our Sustainable Development Report highlights the economic, ecological and social challenges and opportunities that are linked to our operations and shows the strategies and solutions that we are applying to meet them.
This report aims to provide our stakeholders with comprehensive, transparent and succinct information. The concerns of our business partners and employees, together with those of stockholders, non-governmental organizations, suppliers, authorities and the general public, form the basis of our reporting. They provide us with crucial impetus for our sustainability strategy.
Our Strategy chapter describes how sustainability is anchored in our operations. We illustrate this with the aid of three focus issues that form part of our commitment to sustainability – our contributions to health care, safeguarding food supplies and climate and resource protection. The Management & Corporate Governance, Innovation & Product Stewardship, Employees, Ecology and Social Commitment chapters contain detailed facts and figures about our sustainability performance.
In this Sustainable Development Report, we have endeavored to ensure maximum transparency, clarity of layout and ease of verification. The auditing company Ernst & Young has subjected all content to an
assurance process.
Due to the abundance of information, selected parts of the report are only available online. Reference is made to this where appropriate in the report (marked in color). This information was also included in the assurance process.
The report is available in German and English. The editorial deadline was April 30, 2012. Our next Sustainable Development Report is due to be published in 2013.
Designations such as manager and employee refer equally to men and women; the masculine form of personal pronouns is used in such cases solely to simplify the text.
Our reporting is aligned to the G3.1 guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the 10 principles of the UN Global Compact (UNGC). The GRI has checked and confirmed that level A+ has been maintained. You can find the statement to this effect and a summarized gri index also listing the corresponding UNGC principles here. A comprehensive overview of the GRI indicators [ 1 ] and our progress in implementing the 10 UNGC [ 2 ] principles taking into account the Blueprint for Corporate Sustainability leadership can be found on the internet.