Everything starts with a clear ESG strategy. The double materiality assessment (DMA) helps to draw up a roadmap that provides direction and guidance for all actions. For many companies, the DMA will no longer be mandatory in the future, but ZOUTMAN continues to recognize its value.

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Maarten: "We would have carried out the DMA even without an obligation. When you directly engage your internal and external stakeholders, your impacts and priorities become much clearer. It creates focus. If you only ask yourself, 'What is important to us?', you risk overlooking themes."

"Pantarein advised us to conduct a new DMA every four years, and that makes sense to us: priorities shift, new stakeholders emerge, and we ourselves build up knowledge. That way, you keep your finger on the pulse."

“ZOUTMAN has built a roadmap towards 2030 around the three classic pillars: environment, social, and governance. For us as a manufacturing company, environment is the most substantial pillar, with ambitions relating to production, packaging, and logistics. By 2030, we want to reduce our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 20 per cent and our scope 3 emissions by 5 per cent.”

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Climate is also part of Securex’s roadmap, Ine, but there’s a strong focus on the social dimension as well.

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Ine: "As a service provider, our internal and external focus is indeed on people, with actions around working conditions and supporting our clients. Our roadmap towards 2030 has two pillars: 'Empowering our people' and 'Driving sustainable impact'. Engaging colleagues in climate action is more challenging, because as a service company that topic is less tangible for us than it is for a company like ZOUTMAN – but that doesn't make it any less important."

Putting ESG into practice is impossible without your colleagues. Maarten, how do you, as a sustainability manager, bring – and keep – people from different departments on board?

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Maarten: "Again, through my role as a mediator. Since becoming Sustainability manager, I spend a lot of time talking to my colleagues. I visit all departments, explain how ESG works and why we need certain information. Feedback is important: when we achieve a success, I explicitly thank people for their contribution."

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Ine: "Internal activation is incredibly important, for instance when collecting ESG data. I have never met a colleague who said: 'Sustainability isn't that important anyway.' Often it comes down to priorities and resources. In an internationally branched organisation, the challenge is even greater: you face language barriers, different definitions of the same concepts, different systems and legislation, and so on."

"At Securex, we use two levers. The first is communication: the message 'We are committed to sustainability' should not only come from the sustainability team, but also from senior management. The second lever is training: to ensure our colleagues understand ESG and act on it, we launched our first online course in 2025, covering questions such as 'What is sustainability?' and 'What does it mean for your role?'.”

"To avoid duplication, we integrate the ESG strategy as much as possible into existing processes – and there are many of those in a company like ours. We don't want to overburden anyone. Linking back to data collection: when we choose a new tool, we primarily look at user-friendliness, rather than how visually appealing the dashboard is."