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Sustainable business operations

Making our business operations more sustainable
In 2030 Achmea’s business operations will be climate neutral. This means that in 2030:
• Carbon emissions (our carbon footprint) will be net zero. Remaining carbon emissions will, after all measures taken, be compensated for 40 years through large-scale reforestation.
• Energy usage (electricity and gas) in our buildings and datacenters will be minimized, looking for possibilities to generate our own energy locally.
• We will acquire 100% of our product and materials in a circular and energy efficient way.

Many measures are being taken to reach these goals in the coming years. Some of which are:
• Location Apeldoorn energy neutral in 2025
• Location Leeuwarden connected to geothermal in 2024
• Strengthening biodiversity on our locations
• Focusing on more sustainable and less traffic mobility.
• Reducing paper-usage and separating waste.
• Measures against climate change in procurement, in collaboration with our partners/suppliers.
• Making for a greener environment around our locations by sharing knowledge, supporting local projects and stimulating innovations.

Environmental policy internal business operations

As an employer and via our housing we aim to achieve fully sustainable and climate-neutral business operations by 2030. With a view to safeguarding this vision and ambition we have compiled an environmental policy. This document explains Achmea’s environmental policy for its internal business operations and therefore relates to Achmea’s personnel and organisation, IT, procurement for internal business operations, housing and facility and document logistics. For all the environmental focus areas relevant to Achmea we describe what these involve, the goals we have set and how we aim to achieve them. We also outline how governance of the environmental policy is structured. This covers the organisation of activities, financing, monitoring and reporting and the environment-related laws and legislation. The environmental policy is reviewed annually against current events and revised where necessary.

Environmental policy Achmea internal business operations

CO₂-Footprint

Development carbon footprint business operations

The figure below shows the forecast carbon footprint from our business operations. This carbon footprint was temporarily lower in 2020 and 2021 because fewer journeys were made and employees stayed away from the office or only came in occasionally.

Reducing energy usage buildings and data centers

As part of our sustainability ambition we are striving for climate neutral business operations in 2030 and have sharpened our goals regarding energy reduction substantially. Our strategy to achieve goals is based on our new way of working and the deployment of sustainable energy generation. Because of the new way of working we are working from home more often than in the office. This will realize a net reduction of our energy use. We want to possibly invest in solar panels, geothermic and other means of sustainable energy generation which we can apply to our locations. By migrating our on-prem servers to the cloud, we are also reducing carbon emissions out of datacenters.

Goal carbon reduction energy usage building: in 2023, 2024 and 2025 we will reduce our carbon emissions (compared to 2019) with 31%, 36% and 42% respectively.

Reducing the number of journeys our employees make and making their travel more sustainable

We are making our employees’ travel more sustainable by, for example, implementing an electric vehicle lease policy and reducing carbon emissions from commuter and business journeys. We have a range of mobility schemes that encourage the use of public transport and/or bicycles, such as the provision of a public transport chip card including use of rental bikes and an allowance for journeys conducted on the employee’s own bicycle. At the same time, we have a clear vision of our new way of working that includes working from home. When it comes to international travel, our policy states that employees will in principle not travel by air within a radius of 700km.

Goal CO2 reduction in traffic mobility: in 2023, 2024 and 2025 we will reduce these CO2 emissions (compared to 2019) by 47%, 54% and 58% respectively.

Separating waste

As of 2015 all of Achmea’s waste is gathered, disposed and processed separately. We are striving to further reduce waste to achieve our goal of having a “waste-free office” in 2030.

Reducing paper-usage

The last few years paper-usage has declined significantly. More and more customer contact is conducted in a digital manner and working from home has reduced our employees printing habits drastically. This fits very well within Achmea’s ambition to become a digital insurance company.

Compensation

We will compensate our yearly net carbon footprint until 2026 by investing in projects that contribute to at least 2 out of 3 SDG’s Achmea focuses on. We choose projects that achieve a clear and quantifiable emission reduction. The last 3 years we chose for the Gold Standard carbon compensation project ‘Cookstoves in Rwanda’. For the mid-long and long term we are compensating by planting trees. For this, we have started a partnership with Land Life Company. For the duration of 3 years (2021-2024) approximately 1.00.00 trees will be planted on degraded land in places like Australië and Iceland.With this we compensate the remaining carbon emission from 2027 on for a duration of 40 years. By mid-2023, 70% of these will have already been planted. Because these are young trees, it will take some years before they absorb enough carbon to be certifiable.

Socially responsible procurement

We expect each and every business Achmea deals with to contribute to our sustainability goals. We strive to procure 100% of our services and product for interal operations in a sustainable an circular way before the end of 2030. Regarding labor rights, human rights and ethics we review our partners/vendors critically.

As a part of socially responsible procurement Achmea wants insight in the sustainability performances of our suppliers. EcoVadis is one of the tools we use to do so, a platform to rate and follow suppliers regarding corporate social responsibility.

Achmea’s sustainability goals play an important role during procurement process and are part of the criteria for selection new suppliers.

In addition Achmea uses the Declaration of sustainability for suppliers as part of the procurement agreement. Product and service specific agreements between the supplier and Achmea are also secured in the agreement.

What we do

Sustainable roof renovation at the Tilburg location Circular IT, repairing and giving a second life

Commitments

Paris Proof Commitment DGBC

Achmea works towards a climate neutral operations in 2030. Part of which is making our offices energy neutral. To emphasize this ambition, we have signed the Dutch Green Building Council’s Paris Proof Commitment on July 5th of 2021. With this Achmea commits to the agreement that all existing and new building in direct control of Achmea Internal Operations should be Paris Proof in 2040.

Anders Reizen

We participate in the coalition Anders Reizen with over 70 other big corporations. De shared ambition of Anders Reizen is cutting the carbon emission of business travel in half in 2030 (in contrast to 2016). Commuter traffic and travel for Achmea, flights included, per employee is what’s considered business travel.