Reduce carbon emissions 

Waste collection, recycling and producing secondary materials all use energy, generating carbon emissions. Although it has a net benefit, creating value from waste requires energy consumption, so at Renewi we actively seek ways to reduce our carbon footprint for these processes.

Heat records are being broken yearly, and climaterelated incidents are increasing across the world. According to the IPCC, human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels. Furthermore, the IPCC states global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.

High-carbon economy

Fossil fuels are generally inexpensive, convenient and widely available. Consequently, their large-scale mining and exploitation are key features of the developed world, resulting in high-carbon economies. The current levels of GHGs pumped into the atmosphere are unsustainable. Fossil fuels are depleting fast. If we don’t act now, the impact of climate change on future generations and global ecosystems will be irreversible and catastrophic. Besides being more circular, energy reduction and cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels are the solutions to reducing carbon emissions. Generating energy via green or renewable sources, such as solar cells and
wind, is needed to turn the tide.

Responsibility of governments and businesses

COP26 sent a clear reminder that each government and every company should comply and participate in order to meet the Paris Agreement by the end of the century. The pressure is increasing, as we are yet to see enough effort being made to start reversing the trend. Furthermore, disruptive solutions are still too few to produce a game-changing impact. We need to act NOW. By the nature of our activities, we at Renewi contribute to fight climate change. By recycling waste, we avoid carbon emissions and we enable the circulation of recycled raw materials. We do, and will continue doing, our part to enable a lower-carbon economy.

While continuing to do what we do well, we support governments and institutions where we operate in building a regulatory framework that should foster the ecological transition.

Responsibility of Renewi

Renewi is evolving fast across all parts of the business – not least by improving support to our customers to help them achieve the required sustainability goals by 2023.
We play a crucial role in lowering carbon emissions within both our own and our customers’ value chain. Consequently, we work hard to expand our waste-toproduct activities, reduce CO2 emissions and find innovative solutions that accelerate this journey.

Our goals and metrics for 2025

Our objectives are to be a leader in clean and green waste collection and reduce the carbon impact of our operations. We aim to reduce our carbon intensity within our scopes 1 and 2.
We work with several metrics for our logistics, fleet and direct site operations.

Clean and green waste collection: what we do

Within our two Commercial Waste Divisions, our efforts were mainly focused on: optimised route plan, collaborations like Green Collective, less polluting fuels and more clean-emission Euro 6 vehicles. Zero-emission vehicle usage will play an increasing role over time as we start to electrify our fleet. We optimised our collection routes to reduce the number of kilometres driven, urban
traffic and emissions. A part of this optimisation is ‘Green Collective’, a joint venture between Renewi and other large waste collection companies. As a result, we now
jointly collect waste within 25 municipal regions in the Netherlands. By driving with one collection vehicle via one combined route, we reduced collection traffic by up
to 50%. Every reduction per 100 kilometres driven leads to a saving of 160kg of CO2. By 2025, we aim to reach 30
regions within this project. We are on track to complete our transition to 100% Euro 6 trucks with 67% of the fleet already transitioned in 2022.

Reduce carbon impact of our operations: what we do

To reduce our carbon footprint in our operations, several levers and solutions are available and rolled out within our operations.

Reducing our energy consumption, eliminating unnecessary energy needs and driving continuous improvement initiatives. As a result, our total energy
consumption (gas, electricity and fuel) decreased by 11% versus FY21.

Greening-up our energy mix. Our on-site energy requirements are increasingly provided by solar roofs and wind turbines, and the procurement of renewable electricity.
In Ghent, we will be installing panels and the largest wind turbine on the Belgian mainland in 2022. This turbine should cover 75% of the electricity use at our Ghent site and around 10% of total electricity use within our Commercial Waste Division in Belgium

Step by step, we are prioritising the procurement of renewable electricity.
Commercial Waste Netherlands took a first move this year by switching to 100% green electricity. By doing so, the total share of renewable energy used on site climbed up to 32.7%, which is already beyond our FY25 target (25%). Furthermore, this had a significant impact on the carbon intensity in our operations: Renewi has therefore already met the target of ‘well below 9kg CO2 emitted per tonne of waste collected’, with a carbon intensity of 8.57 this year. Participating in carbon-capture innovation projects. M&W has engaged with multiple parties in the Moerdijk
region to investigate options for carbon capture. Specifically, the goal for M&W of the exploration is to investigate the options for capturing all of the emissions
of the ATM site in Moerdijk. Reducing our carbon footprint in our operations is aided by the awareness of our employees. For those who have a company car, we are working with our fleet leasing
partners to encourage hybrid or electric cars. This year the percentage of hybrid or electric cars out of our total employee mobility fleet increased from 23.7% to 32%.

Outlook

We will continue our efforts to remain at the forefront of clean and green waste collection and will set a new carbon reduction target in our operations. As mentioned earlier in this report, we are currently embarking on a project to map and quantify our carbon footprint scope 3 and to set emissions targets aligned with Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The outcomes from this project will be included in our subsequent disclosures.