Responsible Business
The priorities of our Responsible Business Programme are the environmental, social and ethical issues that are ranked most important by our internal and external stakeholders. Each issue has been categorised into one of the three focus areas of our Responsible Business Programme. We update our progress to the goals and commitments of each focus area in our Annual Responsible Business Reports.
Our reports:
- Belron NZ Responsible Business Report 2023
- Belron NZ Responsible Business Report 2022
- Belron NZ Responsible Business Report 2021
- Belron NZ Responsible Business Report 2020
Below are just some of the initiatives we are working on, and we continue to explore other initiatives to contribute to social and environmentally responsible business practices.
People
Supporting Kiwis through Lifeline
Smith&Smith® along with Laser Group are proud to be a corporate partner of Lifeline. Lifeline has been helping Kiwis in crisis for almost 60 years
Lifeline receives over 10,000 calls per month and 30,000 texts are sent & received from people of all ages and ethnicities who are struggling with a wide range of issues, including relationship and work problems, mental health, grief, abuse, bullying and loneliness. They help an average of 15-20 people a day at high risk of suicide.
Throughout the year, our team work on a number of initiatives and activities to raise funds for Lifeline. These include the Lifeline push up challenge, raffles, barbeques, bake offs, Mental Health Awareness Week, as well as the Smith&Smith® Best of New Zealand bi-annual competition, Smith&Smith® roadshows and Laser conference.
Supporting Afrika Tikkun through our global giving back initiative
Afrika Tikkun is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the eradication of poverty in South Africa. It supports that goal by creating and running a number of programmes throughout the country to care for vulnerable children in a variety of ways. The goal of the organisation is to help children grow into successful adults who will strive to forge their careers or go on to tertiary education.
Partnerships
Sustainable Procurement
We aim to minimise the social and environmental impact of our supply chain by procuring high quality products from responsible sources. This includes identifying suppliers with high risk social and/or environmental profiles and progressively auditing our suppliers on their performance in relation to environmental, social and ethical issues.
Our Business Partners Code of Conduct sets out the minimum standards of behaviour that we expect our business partners and suppliers to meet in the areas of labour and human rights, health and safety, environment, business integrity, privacy and supplier diversity.
Planet
Circular Economy
At Smith&Smith® we’re on a mission to continuously reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill by implementing a sustainable recycling programme. In 2023, 94% of the windscreens we replaced were recycled and approximately 53% of other waste (excluding glass) was diverted from landfill by recycling cardboard, paper and other items used daily in our business.
In partnership with 5R Solutions, our glass is recycled into everything from bottles, glass wool insulation, pool filters and even used for sandblasting. And we’re not done yet, we’re continuing to expand the programme to our network of Authorised Dealers.
Climate Change
We are committed to actively reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to zero and supporting our partners to reduce their impact. Our Science Based Targets were validated by the Science Based Target Initiative in 2023 demonstrate our commitment to achieve this. Our targets* are:
By 2030
- Reduce Scope 1 & 2 emissions 42%
- Reduce Scope 3 emissions (categories 1 to 5) by 25%
By 2050
- Commit to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain
- Reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions 90%
*Compared to a 2021 baseline
Certifications
EcoVadis
We are proud to have been awarded the EcoVadis Platinum Rating for our sustainability performance for the first time in 2024 – putting us among the top 1% of global companies assessed by EcoVadis. Our 2024 score of 80 out of 100, is a four point improvement on our previous assessment. We aim to continue to improve our EcoVadis rating as we implement our Responsible Business Framework further. EcoVadis assesses more than 100,000 companies in over 175 countries.
Toitū enviromark®
Our Environmental Management System is Toitū enviromark® diamond certified (ISO 14001:2015 equivalent).