Our climate commitment

Our Climate Commitment

At the COP 23 meeting in 2017, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that “in a clear sign of continuing long-term climate change caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG), 2015, 2016 and 2017 have been confirmed as the three warmest years on record”. Emissions levels are stabilising, but concentrations of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere are still on the rise. This directly contributes to the rising sea levels and the increase in climate phenomena such as hurricanes, which are affecting all our ecosystems.

Decathlon identified greenhouse gas emissions as one of our priority challenges in 2013. In 2017 we implemented quarterly reporting on this indicator and developed training programmes to ensure that our teammates would have the requisite skills to take on these issues.

We believe that our local teams are the best equipped to manage our environmental impact, and that is why in 2017 we rolled out measuring tools and trained our teams across the world to use them. This effort enabled them to develop their own strategies and action plans to meet the overall reduction goal.

2017 SUMMARY

As our business grew, our annual GHG emissions rose compared with 2016 as we continue efforts to reduce our carbon footprint.

The impact of our work was not uniform across all our different business activities.

We provided more tools and training as part of our strategy of empowering our teammates at the local level, so they could work more efficiently, set their own goals and develop their own action plans.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OF THE RESULTS OF OUR 2017 ASSESMENTS

Since 2013, we have counted all emissions that can be attributed to our activities in Decathlon’s annual GHG assessment, including the raw materials extraction required for production, in-store sales of products and their end-of-life stage, product manufacturing and transport, and site emissions.

In late 2015, at a time when our business was growing, Decathlon committed to stabilising GHG emissions produced by our activities within five years.

In 2017 our total CO2 emissions stood at 8.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, a 14.8% increase compared with 2016. Over the past three years, we have observed that the emissions growth curve runs parallel to that of our business growth, due to product sales and our international expansion. That is why we updated our trajectory in 2016 to take future business growth into account for the 2021 deadline.

In 2018 we hope to develop medium- and long-term goals to rely on the SBT1 international initiative, meaning that they align with the two-degree trajectory established by the Paris Agreement.

This carbon trajectory is more than just an assessment tool; we can use it to actively adjust our performance in response to our growth and the strategies and tools we have put in place.

The actions we have undertaken at different levels of our organisation have produced encouraging results that we must build on by intensifying our strategic efforts.

In 2017 we:

– improved the energy efficiency of our sites: -8.8% kWh/m2,

reduced the carbon intensity for the transport of our products from warehouses to stores in Europe,

– stabilised our per-item carbon performance. Our eco-design strategies for design, industrial processes and materials selection have helped us reduce the impact of certain products

– increased waste sorting rates in Europe by 27%.

FOCUS :

« Explaining CO2 and its impact »

The increase in CO2 , also referred to carbon or greenhouse gas, causes global warming.

When carbon turns into carbon dioxide it becomes a greenhouse gas that negatively impacts energy exchanges between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise. The pollution we create retains heat.

MEASURING AND MANAGING CO2 PERFORMANCE WHERE IT MAKES AN IMPACT

In 2017 the international network comprised 85 Environmental Leaders, including 15 Country Environmental Leaders, 50 Decathlon Brand Leaders and 20 Industrial Process Leaders. These local players roll out the comprehensive Decathlon GHG emissions reduction strategy by measuring and adapting their initiatives to the context and the challenges they face.

Quarterly reporting on environmental data was implemented so that the results could be tracked on an ongoing basis.

Two tools are currently being used to measure and manage the impact of our products and our sites (stores and warehouses).

In 2017 we began offering regular training sessions for local teams. Through these courses, leaders in the countries are empowered to manage their own data. Eight training sessions took place this year.

The environmental impact of our sites encompasses teammate and user travel, energy consumption, product transport, waste production, building construction, consumables purchases and air conditioning leakage.

Meanwhile, the Decathlon brands design teams now have access to an eco-design module that can be used to perform simple life-cycle analyses and measure the environmental impact of components and products.

The total impact for sites and products is then calculated. This gives us a comprehensive view of CO2 emissions for Decathlon as a whole, as well as for each country, Decathlon brand or product family.

Our next priorities will be to help our suppliers manage their CO2 emissions and support our teams as they develop more of their own goals locally. We are relying on the Science Based Targets (SBT) initiative to determine our ambitions and ensure they remain consistent.