Double Materiality Assessment
We updated our materiality assessment at the end of 2024, gathering feedback from our customers, employees and senior leaders on what they saw as the most significant sustainability priorities. In line with current best practice, such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), this was a Double Materiality Assessment (DMA) which considered factors from two perspectives:
Impact Materiality - 'Inside Out' - Our impact on environment and society: How do we affect the world?
Financial Materiality - 'Outside In' – How sustainability issues affect our financial performance: How does the world affect us?
Our DMA validated our previous focus on selected ESG topics, as covered in this report, and gave insight into emerging regulatory requirements and matters of interest and importance to our stakeholders.
DMA Grid
Plotting our DMA feedback showed the prioritisation shown in the figure below:
Highest Impact Topics
We determined that key ESG focus and disclosure topics for EcoOnline would be:
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (climate change mitigation)
- Energy efficiency, renewables investment and decarbonisation, linked to power consumption in our third-party data centres and with the expansion of AI
- Most of our emissions are Scope 3 (beyond our boundaries – bought-in goods and services), so supplier tracking, engagement and action are significant
- Climate risk scenarios, GHG data quality, Net Zero strategies and supplier engagement are also key to the products that we use to support our customers
Environmental Management
- Effective waste management – notably for e-waste, recycling and disposal
- ISO 14001 certification, supported by an environmental management system across the scope of EcoOnline’s operations
Investing in and ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of our workforce
Maintaining cybersecurity, data and privacy protection
- We process and manage a significant amount of customer data
- We are also expanding our adoption of AI and algorithm development
Human capital development
- Demonstrating effective and cohesive employment practices, engagement, volunteering, wage equality and diversity across our territories
- Demonstrating coherent investment in our people to support attraction and retention in a fluid, highly skilled talent market
Implementing and maintaining effective supplier governance, labour standards and working conditions
- Suppliers and bought-in goods and services are key to our value chain