Purpose
For more than a decade, we have distinguished ourselves by embracing sustainability and providing value for all our stakeholders across the three dimensions of People, Planet and Profit. We have taken a decisive step as a purpose-led company, contributing to a brighter world for all with our science-based solutions. Our purpose is therefore fully anchored in our long-term purpose-led, performance-driven Strategy.
Our purpose is to create brighter lives for all
As a global leader in the science behind better health and nutrition, we have the opportunity, capability, and therefore responsibility to apply our resources and expertise where they can have the greatest impact. We use our bright science to deliver positive transformations at scale and to create brighter lives for all.
We aspire to create value for all our stakeholders — customers, employees, shareholders and society at large — and to build a stronger legacy and a brighter future for generations to come.
We are already reaching more than 2.51 billion people worldwide
Acting on our purpose
We make change happen in three ways:
- Improve: We improve our own operations to do no harm to people and planet. We optimize our own operational impact by continually raising safety standards, promoting health and well-being in our workforce, reducing our emissions, improving resilience, increasing our use of renewable energy, improving our water consumption, and unlocking more value from limited resources
- Enable: We enable our customers and partners to have a positive impact by delivering products and solutions that enable them to deliver sustainable and healthy solutions for the planet and society
- Advocate: We advocate in our business ecosystem for systemic change — we advocate for the future we believe in and we fully accept our responsibilities as a corporate member of society
We are convinced that the private sector as a whole needs to deliver value for all stakeholders — not just employees, customers and shareholders, but the world’s communities and the individuals who live in them. We feel this responsibility and therefore take an integrated approach to act upon our purpose by reducing our negative impact and increasing our positive impact through the implementation of a range of internal and external initiatives. These include:
- increasing our Science Based Targets to deliver an absolute reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from our operations (scope 1 + 2) by 50% by 2030 versus our 2016 baseline, providing a firm foundation for DSM to achieve net-zero by 2050
- making a set of measurable Food System Commitments covering Health for People, Health for the Planet, and Healthy Livelihoods. These new commitments support our ambition to have a positive and meaningful impact on the world’s food systems and contribute to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2, 3, 12 and 13
An overview of these initiatives can be found in Our approach to the Sustainable Development Goals and throughout this Report. Examples of our purpose-led solutions are provided in the Case studies in this Report.
1 Lives Reached is a measure of the estimated number of consumers reached each year via products of customers and other third parties which contain DSM products and solutions. This estimate is based on key market insights relating to market share, usage patterns and product composition. Mathematical modeling is used to eliminate double counting. For more information, see Explanation of some concepts and ratios.
Lives Reached is a measure of consumers already reached through consumer products of third parties containing DSM products and solutions. This measure addresses key end-markets representing approximately 25% of DSM’s total sales. These end-markets cover our business segments — Nutrition, Materials and Innovation Center.
The number of Lives Reached is calculated for each market separately and then aggregated. As a business-to-business company, our products reach end-consumers via third parties, so calculations per market are performed at global level. Consumer touch points are assumed to be unrelated, and overlap is eliminated using statistical methods (De Morgan’s Law and Probability Theory — Independence). The actual overlap may be larger or smaller than calculated based on this assumption.
Key assumptions are used to perform these calculations and include DSM’s market share, total consumer markets, share of wallet and consumer consumption behavior. These assumptions are made based on external market data where available, supplemented with market and business intelligence insights.
For more information on Lives Reached, see the company website.
