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Sustainability

Strategic priorities

Our businesses provide innovative solutions that address the major trends affecting the world – the demand for affordable healthcare, the need for greater energy efficiency and the desire for personal well-being. At Philips, sustainability is all about enhancing the health and well-being of individuals and the communities they live in. At the same time we constantly endeavor to improve the environmental performance of our products and processes, and to drive sustainability throughout the supply chain.

Notwithstanding the challenging economic environment, Philips has kept its focus on sustainability in 2011. This is rooted in our long-standing belief that sustainability is a key enabler for growth and offers opportunities to innovate our way out of the economic crisis. Therefore, sustainability is an integral part of Philips’ strategy and “Deliver on our EcoVision sustainability commitments” was one of the topics on the 2011 Management Agenda.

By focusing on three sustainability leadership key performance indicators in which we can bring our competencies to bear, namely ‘care’, ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘materials’ we aim to deliver on our 2015 commitments:

Bringing care to people
- Target: 500 million lives touched by 2015
Improving the energy efficiency of Philips products
- Target: 50% improvement by 2015 (for the average total product portfolio) compared to 2009
Closing the materials loop
- Target: Double global collection and recycling and the amount of recycled materials in products by 2015 compared to 2009

In 2011, we already touched over 465 million lives, mainly driven by our Healthcare sector. Further, the energy efficiency of the products we sold improved slightly (some 2% in 2011 and 8% compared to 2009). Our Lighting sector contributed most to this indicator and notwithstanding strong LED sales, the energy efficiency improvement in the total product portfolio sold in 2011 was limited as traditional lamps were still much in demand. With regard to ‘Closing the materials loop’, our global collection and recycling totaled to about 35,000 tons and the amount of recycled materials in our products increased to around 10,000 tons. More importantly, roadmaps have been developed to double the amount of recycled materials in our products with a focus on recycled plastics. More information on these parameters can be found in Sustainability statements.

External recognition

In 2011, we gained external recognition on various occasions. We obtained the highest status in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (super-sector leader) and we achieved the highest scores in the Carbon Disclosure Project, both for our Carbon Disclosure and for our Carbon Performance.