Page 71 - Vaculug Sustainable Report 2022

In 2022, our sustainability agenda was steered by our Chairman.
As is stated in our ‘Vaculug Limited Quality, Environmental, Health & Safety Policy, our Managing Director is responsible for ensuring that our company is operating in compliance with all standards and procedures outlined in our policies and certifications.
In addition to our sustainability focused leadership team, we value the important role that every employee across our organisation plays in implementing our ESG policies.
To ensure compliance of our policies, we remain committed to educating, training, and empowering our managers and employees to ensure that responsible governance and leadership is both understood and practiced across our organisation, as well as across our value chain.
Good governance also requires making difficult decisions that sometimes come at a cost. This was seen in early 2022 when soon after the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out - despite any short, medium, or long-term impacts to the business - our Chairman announced that, effective immediately, Vaculug would no longer be sourcing raw materials from Russia.
The unwavering decision made
by our Chairman to cease the sourcing
of raw materials from Russia, permanently, was demonstrative of how our business
is led by our values - above everything else.
In line with our commitment to being a responsible business, in 2022 our Senior Management Team introduced a policy in response to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The policy, titled Conflict Minerals and Cobalt Sourcing, outlines
our company’s commitment to protecting and respecting human rights, and to ensuring that no minerals or cobalt sourced from conflict zones are used in our products.
OUR ESG LEADERSHIP
With our sustainability strategy, we mapped out a three-year plan that aligns our goals with the Tire Sector SDG Roadmap, making us the first independent retreader in the world to align with larger multinational organisations across the industry1.
The first step we took on this journey of sustainable transformation, which we began to formalise in 2022, was to identify the synergies between our current path and that of the industry, as well as the gaps.
We referred to the UN SDGs to map to align
our goals and to support the global sustainable development effort. In our 2021 Report we highlighted that our journey of transformation is contributing positively to several SDGs (namely SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 17). In 2022, through our various ESG initiatives, we have elevated our efforts to contribute to these goals.
We believe that the key to good governance for
any organisation is transparency. Although not yet mandated by industry regulations, by disclosing our commitments and progress in the form of our annual Sustainability Report, we are committed to keeping our stakeholders informed, while at the same time holding ourselves to account on our promises.
As a British manufacturing company that has been operating for more than 70 years, we value what it means to be part of a community.
Our community fuels the work we do; and it is comprised of many valued stakeholders including our employees, our partners, and our neighbours.
We also appreciate the role we can play to promote our industry and the work we are doing to be better corporate citizens, for our communities and the planet.
This involves working with our local council in Grantham to support projects in our surrounding communities. On many occasions, we have also put pen to paper to write letters to our politicians, including Members of Parliament and our
Prime Minister, to advocate for greater support for our industry given the role retreading plays
in decarbonisation and waste reduction, in line with the UK’s SDG efforts.
5Source: https://sustainabilitydriven.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/WBCSD_TIP_Sustainability-Driven-SDG-Tire-Sector-Roadmap.pdf, accessed May 2022.
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