May 2023 Newsletter

As part of our 2030 Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) action plan, we’re on a mission to advance sustainability. With our commitment to ‘making amazing happen for a better world’, we’re looking to work with you, our supplier partners, to develop innovative sustainable products and service solutions that help to lead the way.

We are delighted to announce the launch of an exciting new range of more sustainable products – our ‘Better World’ range. This will launch first in the UK & Ireland in March, followed by other EMEA markets later in the year.

Why? Well, we’re not alone in our concerns for a better world – research has shown that our customers list sustainability among their top 3 priorities and are actively seeking partners to help support their ESG agendas and goals. They want to work with suppliers that make it easier for them to make greener product choices and educate them on the benefits of using more sustainable products or solutions.

RS is committed to helping our customers make that greener product choice by tagging products that meet trusted sustainability or energy saving standards. You can learn all about our new range in our dedicated ‘Better World’ area on the website here.

This is also a great opportunity to promote the sustainable benefits of your products to customers and help to differentiate our brands in the market.

How do products qualify to become part of the Better World range? To substantiate our sustainability claims we have pulled together a guide which outlines the certifications that qualify for our Better World range. You can find it here. In simple terms, for your products to be included in the Better World range they must hold one of the 40+ sustainability certifications or energy labels we’ve validated; or have a clear environmental benefit supported by an externally verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).

Now, we know that certifications don’t always show the full scope of why a product is sustainable or the improvements you are making, which is why we need you to tell us more about your products.

Let us know what sustainability credentials, improvements, and evidence you have that aren’t included in the certifications listed in our guide. We can then review these to see if they can be included in the range. Simply contact your RS Supplier Manager or email our Sustainable Product team with the details here: procurementgovernance@RSgroup.com.

By collaborating together, we can provide our customers with the confidence, understanding and evidence that your products have sustainability improvements – as well as helping them with their own ESG goals.

Another exciting achievement in our ESG journey – we have been scored an ‘A’ for our CDP supplier engagement.

CDP is the key industry benchmark for action on climate. Achieving this score puts us in the leadership category, acknowledging the implementation of best practice through working with our supplier partners to incentivise significant environmental changes. This involves Better World products, greener logistics, carbon reduction – to name a few.

This scoring is important for our customers, it gives them confidence in RS and our supplier partners that we are jointly prioritising climate action, together. We’re proud of this recognition and thank everyone involved in our ESG journey so far.

At our recent EMEA Supplier & ESG event in February we shared our Supplier ESG action plan. This plan is integral to ensuring partnerships with our suppliers around the world that focus on driving positive action and delivering greater benefits for our people, customers and stakeholders.

We’ve created an ESG Supplier Handbook (rsgroup.com) to support you and provide a detailed insight into our ESG Supplier Action plan. This tool is designed to help build understanding and promote a closer relationship to inspire positive action, alongside a useful range of external resources and links to support this.

Our 4 key priorities are;

1. Ethical Trading Declaration
   Our most fundamental asks is for you to read, sign and return our Ethical Trading Declaration Policy. This covers the minimum mandatory requirements for doing business with RS, and we are looking to have a signed declaration in place for each of our partnerships. Please send these on to the RS Procurement Governance team at procurementgovernance@RSgroup.com.
2. Get an EcoVadis assessment and share your scorecard with us
   EcoVadis is the world’s leading and most trusted social and environmental sustainability rating for businesses. It can help you manage your upstream and downstream ESG performance. 50% of our partners are now EcoVadis rated and we want to grow this quickly. We ask you to aim for a silver medal and above.
3. Better World products
   We recently launched an exciting new range of more sustainable products, known as our Better World product range. This has initially launched in the UK & Ireland and will following further countries later this year. More information about this is found in the Better World story within this newsletter.
4. Science-based carbon reduction targets
   At the event we talked about the importance of taking science-based climate action, mapping and reporting emissions and setting science-based targets (SBTs).

We would like to know where you are on your journey, currently.

• Have set SBTs and had them verified by the SBTi
• Have set SBTs committed to the SBTi but not yet verified
• Have not yet set SBTs but plan to do so with the SBTi before 2025
• Have not yet started on their SBT or SBTi journey, but looking to find out more

Please take a minute to complete this form and share your progress with us.

Last year RS in Italy launched a new ESG plan to take them on their journey to be first choice not only for customers, but for the planet too.

Continuing throughout 2023, there are new initiatives being launched to be more sustainable, which include more involvement from our suppliers.

GOING GREENER: A NEW PLAN FOR 2023

The plan, which launched in April, will cover the four pillars highlighted in the RS Group strategic ESG plan: Advancing Sustainability, Championing Education and Innovation, Empowering our People and Doing business Responsibly.

Several new activities have already been initiated, including transforming the Italian headquarters into a zero-waste office, plus a ‘Smart Packages’ system which allows the recycling of boxes received inbound to use them for outbound goods – sanitized, with packaging materials reused. Seeing a reduction in waste and the use of plastic air sealed bags to protect products.

To support the pillar of Championing Education, RS in Italy is also continuing its partnership with Alessandro Torrisi, a young engineer that uses RS products to develop smart and sustainable mechanical and electrical projects – shared on his ATLab YouTube channel.

Our team of employees also participate in volunteering activities that involve cleaning the parks and discovering more about the local landscape – thanks to a local association which mixes guided tours with cultural insights and plogging (a combination of jogging and picking up litter).

With regards to Doing Business Responsibly, RS in Italy echoes what our whole group is aiming to do – create a process whereby our suppliers can get involved with local ESG plans. There will be a short questionnaire sent out to help you provide ESG information, as part of our supplier qualification process, so that we can work together to provide a sustainable and ethical supply chain.

Here you can find further updates on Italy’s ESG plan.