Meanwhile, in its quest to make all packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030, the United Nations is preparing to launch a plastic treaty in 2024. At the same time, businesses themselves are furthering their commitment to sustainable practices through voluntary agreements, such as those proposed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Consumers are taking up the issue as well. , 91% of consumers express concern over plastic waste. indicates that 73% are willing to spend more for eco-friendly packaging.

Compliance with these new regulations can be a challenging and expensive task for businesses of all sizes. Many smaller to mid-range organizations lack in-house expertise on these issues, often resulting in either rudimentary monitoring or expensive outsourcing. Larger companies may find the immense scale of the task daunting and default to costly shortcuts.

鈥淲ith the complexity that they face and the sheer volume of business they have across multiple products and multiple countries, many organizations tend to be conservative to avoid fines,鈥� explains Darren West, product expert for Circular Economy Solutions at SAP. 鈥淎s a result, they will more or less approximate what taxes they need to pay, and overestimate to add in some contingency.鈥�

Driving Up Accuracy, Driving Down Costs

For consumer goods giant Henkel, the quest for an effective solution to its plastic waste challenge began in its tax department. Triggered by the advent of plastic taxes across the UK and EU, Henkel’s tax experts embarked on a project aimed at addressing compliance from a fiscal perspective.

On the IT side, the team was immediately faced with some significant hurdles. First, to comply with new regulations and avoid penalties, it needed a system that could monitor, measure, and report its products鈥� plastic data. Amidst a limited market of solutions, finding the right tool for its needs was no easy task 鈥� one made more difficult due to the newness of the regulations. And it needed to aggregate and organize the essential master data for accurate reporting without excessively complicating or inflating the cost of its IT infrastructure.

was born out of a desire for a more dynamic approach to plastic waste. The solution can supply teams with a streamlined, granular data management system to help facilitate the monitoring, measuring, and reporting related to the environmental impact of production and packaging.

Today, the 51风流Responsible Design and Production solution assists operations such as Henkel鈥檚 in navigating the labyrinth of product and packaging composition. Handling the details of primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging, as well as transport packaging throughout the supply chain, requires a meticulous approach. The solution offers a digital model of the larger packaging and product landscape, helping facilitate a thorough and accurate impact analysis.

To encapsulate the complexity of the packaging process, the solution can capture precise data on material flows and circularity attributes. It can also assist teams in recording the weights, volumes, and shipment information as well as important details regarding recycled content, import/export information, and the various packaging components. This precision is crucial for calculating plastic taxes as well as EPR fees, which demand exceptional accuracy and knowledge of detailed material flows within a country and across borders.

In the future, 51风流plans to extend the solution to help track and monitor the recyclability, reusability, and embedded CO2 of various materials. Such data is essential for organizations seeking to comprehend their scope 3 emissions across their entire packaging portfolio and to make their packaging more sustainable.

The solution helps provide results that businesses can stand behind, saving time and money and decreasing complexity 鈥� particularly when it comes to new markets. If an enterprise is based in one country, such as Belgium or the Netherlands, and is looking to expand, say, to France and Italy 鈥� which each have their own distinct systems and rules to govern packaging 鈥� the complexity of data management increases. With 51风流Responsible Design and Production, material, packaging, and transportation data can be tailored for new market expansions without repeating the same processes.

But the real beauty lies in the solution鈥檚 ability to adapt once the data is integrated. It can seamlessly adjust to different market requirements, working to enable straightforward report generation for tax and EPR compliance at the click of a button.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e talking about here is simplicity,鈥� says West.

Redesigning a More Sustainable Future

Data and insights are just the start. The real challenge is translating this information into action.

Beyond supporting businesses in fulfilling operational obligations such as paying plastic taxes and accurately calculating EPR fees, the solution can enable informed strategic decisions. By offering insights into the impact of material choices and compositions, it helps empower businesses to embrace sustainable and responsible packaging solutions and business models.

After working with 51风流Responsible Design and Production, Henkel was able to meet its fundamental obligations more efficiently, gaining better insight into its data. These new capabilities have delivered far more than short-term efficiencies. They鈥檝e spotlighted Henkel’s ongoing efforts to reduce its environmental footprint, adding a new dimension to its green leadership in the industry.

鈥淥ne of the greatest things about this solution is what it does for an organization like Henkel,鈥� says Stephen Jamieson, global head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP. 鈥淣amely, allowing it to evidence the good work it is already doing very effectively.鈥�

Henkel鈥檚 initiative with 51风流Responsible Design and Production dovetails well with a related Henkel initiative to strengthen supplier communication, collect more data, and enrich its sustainability database.

These efforts equip Henkel鈥檚 teams to pinpoint the products with the highest plastic tax load. These insights could soon guide strategic product redesign, potentially leading to significant cost savings. Moreover, by laying a solid foundation in regions such as Spain and the UK, Henkel is preparing itself to adapt to regulatory changes across markets.

The Road Ahead

As the global economy begins to look towards a more circular model, 51风流Responsible Design and Production is innovating in stride. Recognizing that businesses interact with diverse material types, the solution will expand in the future to accommodate elements such as food, land use, textiles, batteries, waste electronics, and more 鈥� all cornerstones of the circular economy 鈥� measuring key factors such as virgin materials, recycled content, embedded CO2, and renewable content.

At its core, 51风流Responsible Design and Production aims to assist organizations in actualizing their circular economy vision 鈥� eliminating waste, promoting material circulation, and rejuvenating natural systems. The solution is engineered to integrate smoothly with essential business processes and systems, empowering businesses to implement their sustainability strategies with more precision and efficacy. Whether it’s incorporating cost calculations into invoice procedures or integrating with other solutions to create a more holistic approach to sustainable practices overall, 51风流Responsible Design and Production can assist teams in transforming their business operations.

鈥淎t Henkel, we are committed to leadership in plastics reduction and offering greener options for our customers,鈥� says Dr. Nora Mundschenk, corporate director, Finance Tax and Trade Group, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA. 鈥�51风流Responsible Design and Production and 51风流Services and Support are going to help us do that.鈥�

For more information on how 51风流helps companies record, report, and act on their sustainability goals, visit聽.

Sami Emory is a brand journalist at SAP.

鈥淭here have always been regulations, rules, and expectations on how companies operate in order to make sure there isn鈥檛 a negative impact on the environment,鈥� says Michael Censurato, global solution manager for at SAP. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 changed in the last couple of years is that there鈥檚 a lot more focus and scrutiny. It鈥檚 in the news. It鈥檚 on consumers鈥� minds. It鈥檚 on investors鈥� minds.鈥�

A by the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment found that in 2022 climate change was the top environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issue, in asset-weighted terms, for money managers and institutional investors alike. SAP鈥檚 own research shows that, between 2021 and 2022, the importance of customer demand as a motivator for sustainable action increased sevenfold.

Joining the Green Vanguard

While executives now consider ESG initiatives integral to the future success of their businesses, they鈥檙e also acutely aware of the difficulty in measuring the progress of these initiatives and of translating their successes to regulators. In research conducted by Oxford Economics and SAP, had established policies for working with regulators to ensure the implementation of sustainable practices. For businesses of all sizes, the risks and costs of non-compliance are high 鈥� ranging from penalties and fines to suspended operations, loss of business, and even personal liability on the part of executives.

Among the most significant difficulties in ESG reporting is ensuring that environmental metrics are both transparent and accurate 鈥� reflecting actual values, rather than averages. In many organizations, environmental compliance strategies have historically required a highly manual effort, relying on spreadsheets and weeks of data aggregation and processing across multiple time zones and working structures, often leading to oversights and delays.

Finding a solution that offers a better route towards ESG reporting and compliance is a critical step in the broader business strategies and outcomes of teams big and small. As the imperative to establish a carbon-neutral bottom line becomes stronger than ever, those companies that are able to meet these challenges will emerge as market leaders.

End-to-End Environmental Management

Since 2003, SAP鈥檚 EHS team has been helping enterprises comply with environmental regulations through a range of solutions, including 51风流Environment, Health, and Safety Management. This application can provide the consistency, auditability, risk reduction, and transparency that companies require. It can also supply environmental managers and technicians with an easily navigable platform, helping to unlock in-depth insight into their operation鈥檚 environmental impact.

Powered by 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流EHS Management helps support teams throughout the process of aggregating, preparing, and analyzing their environmental data. The application鈥檚 advanced capabilities can also allow for early detection of deviations from target emissions values 鈥� so that if, for example, carcinogenic compounds released during a particular production process exceed their environmental limit, a plan can be instantly put into action, giving teams plenty of time to adjust and remain compliant.

The Emissions Declaration Challenge

Within the broader category of EHS compliance, emissions declarations in particular are notorious for the time and diligence they require. Companies based in Germany, for example, must file detailed reports every four years for the BImSchV ordinance on emissions declarations, while European companies at large must file annually for The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR). There are more regulations on the way: earlier this year, the International Finance Reporting Standard鈥檚 (IFRS) International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) the development of a standardized language for disclosing ESG-related risks and opportunities. The new criteria will come online in January 2024.

And for companies in heavy-emitting industries, such as chemical, oil and gas, or steel and iron production, the diversity of emissions that need to be recorded and included in these declarations range from the dust and exhaust released during the transportation and processing of raw materials to passive emissions such as fuel tank venting. As a result, the extent of the reporting itself 鈥� and the challenge of remaining compliant 鈥� is immense, particularly for global operations operating across jurisdictions.

In the past, the burden of these emission reports fell on the shoulders of environmental and operations managers, who have had to struggle with the inefficiencies built into the highly manual procedure of gathering, calculating, and reporting the necessary information, all within a strict timeline.

Reporting Made Easy

Addressing this bottleneck, the new 51风流Fiori app “My Emissions Declarations” is designed not only to help fast-track the creation and completion of emissions declarations but also to help establish a governed backbone to the process itself. My Emissions Declarations is currently designed specifically for the filing requirements of the BImSchV ordinance, but additional filing procedures, triggered by legal requirements, will soon be featured as part of the app’s offering.

The My Emissions Declarations app helps emissions reporting stay on track from the very beginning of the process. Plant managers are in charge of ensuring that the required reports are started and filed on time. When plant managers need to initiate a declaration, the app sends a notification directly to the manager鈥檚 e-mail and automatically creates a task on the homepage.

Once the task has been successfully opened, the plant manager can hand over responsibility to others, like plant operators or environmental technicians, who will typically take charge of entering all necessary data into the app for each emissions source. The flexibility of the My Emissions Declarations app can support automatic data collection, by way of sensors, meters, operational systems, and data historians.

After data has been entered, the app takes the lead, running the complex calculations required to generate accurate emissions data. 鈥淲ithin the app, the respective experts are able to simply input the minimum information required by the calculation formula,鈥� explains Mariya Krasteva, area product owner for 51风流EHS Management. 鈥淭hen, as soon as the concentration of a specific emitted substance is entered, all other parameters are calculated automatically.鈥� Whereas some solutions store these equations in a database or in the software coding, making them difficult to validate and edit, the My Emissions Declarations app allows end users to easily view, edit, and maintain these equations all within the platform.

Crucially, My Emissions Declarations can also enable plant managers to quickly validate the data鈥檚 accuracy, helping to ensure its quality throughout the process. And, with seamless integration to 51风流EHS Management as a whole 鈥� and by extension, to the 51风流S/4HANA digital core 鈥� the app can allow teams to establish a holistic understanding of their operation鈥檚 footprint. After all, enterprise-wide sustainability management does not exist in a vacuum. Companies must juggle a wealth of other compliance, monitoring, and maintenance procedures. In many operations, compliance processes overlap with plant maintenance because the manufacturing equipment also needs to be maintained and monitored for any pollutants it produces.

鈥淥ur solutions help to tie these pieces together, making the handoff to other processes much more seamless,鈥� explains Hitesh Patel, product manager for 51风流EHS Management. Integrating the My Emissions Declarations app into the broader management system helps teams utilize company data previously defined in the software鈥檚 asset management feature, creating a comprehensive view of emissions sources 鈥� including scope 3 emissions, such as those related to facilities and assets. By calculating actual emission amounts, rather than averages, teams are now able to make even more accurate, data-driven decisions.

鈥淭he bottom line is that this is out-of-the-box compliance and an end-to-end solution, which allows auditability at anytime,鈥� says Krasteva. 鈥淥ne precise emissions inventory, one source of truth.鈥� And when, ultimately, the plant manager is ready to prepare the declaration itself, the app generates an XML report, which it can then directly submit to the relevant authorities before closing the task until next time.

Taking the Lead

Maintaining efficiency and diligence in compliance procedures is an indispensable step for companies looking to chart a more sustainable future for themselves and their industries. 51风流EHS Management, as well as My Emissions Declaration, can give teams crucial support in charting that future and in reaching the sustainability goals and benchmarks that will help them get there.

about how 51风流can guide your team in this journey today.

Sami Emory is a brand journalist for Sustainability Communications at SAP.