WBCSD recognition for CEMEX
World Business Council for Sustainable Development highlights CEMEX’s Net Value to Society Statement
THE World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has recognized CEMEX’s best reporting practices in its 2018 ‘Reporting Matters’, highlighting the company’s Net Value to Society Statement.
According to the WBCSD, the Net Value to Society methodology is a tool that ‘consolidates positive and negative impacts proving its suitability for managing sustainability in a holistic way while also providing key information for decision-making and risk management’.
CEMEX developed their Net Value to Society Statement to enhance understanding of the materiality, relevance and interdependency of the company’s positive and negative impacts, including those considered as externalities.
To determine this value, CEMEX say several economic, social, and environmental impacts are added or subtracted from the company’s retained benefit*. The result is an essential step to informed management and decision-making to improve the value that CEMEX contribute to the company, society and the planet.
‘Our Net Value to Society methodology responds to the need to reflect how CEMEX’s activities impact society, allowing us to be more transparent, manage risks better and achieve our sustainability ambitions,’ said Jesus Gonzalez (pictured), executive vice-president of sustainability and operations development at CEMEX.
‘We are proud to see that the results in 2017 demonstrated that the net value that CEMEX created for society is 2.35 higher than the company’s retained benefit. This underscores the great importance that our sustainability priorities have in the company’s strategy.’
First implemented as a key tool for sustainability management in CEMEX’s operations in the UK, in 2017 CEMEX validated their methodology with the comparable KPMG’s True Value methodology and began to apply it on a global level in the company’s 2017 Integrated Report.
* CEMEX calculate their retained benefit as EBITDA minus taxes, interest and dividends. This represents the part of CEMEX’s value creation that remains within the company.
