Fighting climate change requires that we all do our share. Our ambitious objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions sets the bar high and encourages us to continuously find ways of improving our climate actions.
– Susanna Saikkonen, VP, Sustainability at Veikkaus
By committing to an international comparable objective of emissions reduction, we want to make sure that our work for the climate is in line with the latest developments of climate science.
The climate targets of the SBT initiative are based on scientific calculations and they provide companies a tool for promoting the achievement of the goals of the Paris agreement. The objective is to limit the global rise of the average temperature to well below 2°C as compared with the pre-industrial era, and to pursue efforts to limit the warming to below 1.5%.
Emission reductions throughout the value chain
At the beginning of 2021, Veikkaus launched a project on environmentalresponsibility, with a view to analyse, e.g., the environmental impacts of our business operations. The carbon dioxide emissions caused by Veikkaus’ operations were measured based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG). The majority of our emissions (ca. 95%) come from our value chain.
Therefore, it is our goal to reduce the emissions not only in our own operations but throughout the value chain.
– Susanna Saikkonen
We are constantly working to enhance the energy efficiency of our premises and to increase the share of renewable energy and heat, based on our corporate environmental programme. In 2021, we started using biodiesel in the company’s transportation vehicles – a measure which reduces the greenhouse gas emissions during the lifecycle of the fuel significantly. Thanks to optimized transportations and combined deliveries, we managed to decrease the number of deliveries clearly last year.
One of the targets of our environmental programme is to lessen the environmental impacts of the slot machines and terminals through lifecycle management and choice of materials. We have made the acquisitions involving significant climate and environmental impacts subject to a number of new environmental criteria and adopted a follow-up mechanism for the evaluation of the environmental impacts of the acquisitions.