DS Smith recognised for circular design principles in new assessment

DS Smith has scored 67 in the 2021 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment – an increase of 16 points compared to last year.

The packaging specialist achieved maximum scores for environmental reporting, product design criteria, resource efficiency benefits of products, and use of recycled and sustainably sourced materials.

The result places DS Smith ahead of the average score of 38 in the containers and packaging industry.

The company revealed it was recognised for its circular design principles and metrics, as well as its targets to protect natural resources as part of DS Smith’s Now and Next sustainability strategy.

A ‘significant’ score increase was also achieved in the areas of climate strategy and water-related risks, reflecting the climate scenario analysis undertaken as part of the firm’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting.

S&P Global is a provider of financial market indices. The S&P Global CSA is an annual evaluation of companies’ sustainability practices and the basis for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) series.

Wouter van Tol, head of sustainability, community and government affairs at DS Smith, said, “Participation in the S&P CSA helps us understand what investors care about across a full breadth of issues and to benchmark our performance against our own criteria but also in comparison to other organisations. We are delighted to have increased our score and continue to drive ESG performance through our Now and Next sustainability strategy, applying the insights obtained from these ratings to understand where there are opportunities to achieve even more.”

Oliver Bradley, sustainability reporting manager at DS Smith, added, “The questions in the CSA require publicly available sustainability metrics and reflect what investors expect to see from our sustainability reporting, which is increasingly greater depth and detail. We used the 2020 CSA results as a key tool in developing our Sustainability Report 2021, leading us to publish a record amount of ESG data.”