Sustainability

Community involvement

Providing knowledge, experience, effort, and funding are the ways we support local communities. Aside from assessing the monetary value of our contributions, we determine the impact created for the community, the environment and for our business, such as the engagement of our employees.

During the pandemic, we are globally donating and contributing to relief efforts. In Italy, we donated eight intensive care beds and made donations to local hospitals targeting the coronavirus response effort. We sent care packages to employees in China. In the Netherlands, Wolters Kluwer has made a financial donation to the Bernhoven hospital in Uden. The hospital had to completely reorganize their services, schedules and facilities and has been transformed into a full-on corona hospital treating only patients affected with the corona virus. The donation will be used for the purchase of equipment such as cooling mattresses and walkers specifically for their intensive care unit (ICU), as well as for rehabilitation equipment for recovering corona patients. The purchase of this equipment represents an important and very welcome advance in the quality of care for corona patients at Bernhoven.

In New York City, we partnered up with facilities and their local mail room to donate approximately 5,000 masks directly to three NY hospitals.

Minimize environmental impact

To demonstrate our commitment to minimizing our environmental impact, we have included our resource-related sustainability ambitions in our Environmental Policy:

• Implement high-opportunity environmental measures;
• Continue growing our expert solutions through innovation and accelerating our global platform and cloud-based integrated solutions;
• Improve processes and optimize office space to reduce consumption of energy and water, and to improve waste treatment and recycling;
• Use alternative energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas production;
• Consolidate and outsource data centers to increase efficiency and reduce energy consumption; and
• Minimize business travel by promoting alternatives such as audio and video conferencing.

Environmental best practices within our offices

As part of Wolters Kluwer’s Green Is Green (GIG) Program, which has the goal to deliver both environmental benefits and cost savings, we launched the GIG Office Program in 2019. This is a volunteer-led green network across more than 40 of our offices to implement green best practices and create opportunities for colleagues to connect on sustainability. A two-month competition was held, designed to quickly enact changes on the ground and increase engagement around sustainability. Over 1,300 employees took part in at least one GIG event. Awards in five categories were given to offices that were greenest, most innovative, most engaged, had largest savings, and best reporting. Winning offices were able to give a donation to an environmental charity of choice and use funds for a green engagement event in 2020.

Responsible supply chain

We work together with our suppliers because we acknowledge our responsibility in the supply chain. We review our procurement process critically and are striving to achieve an environmentally and socially sustainable supply chain.

The Supplier Management Program includes initial due diligence and ongoing review of third-party relationships. This helps ensure the supplier provides products and services consistent with our requirements and those of our clients.

Suppliers are requested to sign the Wolters Kluwer Supplier Code of Conduct and to confirm whether they operate in one or more of the listed countries and industries.

Countries and industries in scope for the evaluation. If (i) the product is manufactured in or service is directly delivered from one of the countries listed and (ii) the supplier is active in one of the industries listed, we require the vendor to present relevant sustainability certifications for which the supplier is certified.

These may include at least one of the following social certifications (or equivalent): OHSAS 18001, ICTI, Smeta (Sedex), UL (PGA), SA8000, BSCI, ETI, ISO 37001.

We recommend that the supplier is also certified for at least one of the following environmental certifications (or equivalent): ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 50001, EMAS, China Environmental Label, QC 080000, UL Environment, LEED, BREEAM.

Suppliers for printed media and office paper products need to be certified by at least one of the following certifications: FSC, PEFC, SFI, EU Ecolabel, Nordic Swan, Blauer Engel.