Managing additional environmental topics
7 Managing additional environmental topics
Hager addresses additional environmental topics, including biodiversity, water usage, and waste management. This section outlines Hager’s recent assessments, actions, and strategies aimed at minimising its ecological footprint and supporting sustainable practices across its operations. Through ongoing evaluation and targeted initiatives, Hager is committed to safeguarding natural resources and contributing positively to ecosystem resilience.
While these topics were not identified as material in our double materiality assessment, Hager recognises their growing importance for sustainable business practices, stakeholder expectations, and future resilience. By maintaining transparency and continuously strengthening its environmental practices, Hager contributes to protecting natural resources and supporting the transition to a more sustainable and circular economy.
7.1
Biodiversity
Safeguarding biodiversity is vital for sustaining life as we know it. The health of our ecosystems directly supports our own wellbeing, which is why it is imperative for Hager to evaluate its impact on biodiversity. In 2025, Hager continued to work proactively to contribute to the resilience of ecosystems, enhancing its performance in every area, so as to help sustain an environment that thrives.
This effort builds on a key milestone reached in 2023, when Hager conducted its first Biodiversity Footprint Assessment (BFA). Using the Global Biodiversity Score (GBS) methodology, Hager began to map how its activities influence the natural world. The analysis looks at the main pressures driving biodiversity loss – from land use and resource extraction to climate change, pollution, and invasive species. It captures both the changes happening now and the longer-term effects that persist over time, offering a fuller picture of how Hager’s footprint unfolds across ecosystems.
What Hager found was both revealing and motivating. Nearly 90% of its biodiversity impact comes from Scope 3 activities, echoing the pattern seen in Hager’s carbon footprint. While its overall impact remains in line with industry averages, and below that of key competitors, it is largely driven by climate-related pressures. This reinforces the importance of Hager’s climate strategy as a lever for protecting biodiversity. Only two of Hager’s sites, Arenzano and Blieskastel, are located within Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA)1, where ecosystems are especially sensitive. Especially in these locations, Hager is committed to taking targeted action to minimise any potential harm.
To further deepen the understanding of biodiversity impact, Hager turned to the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT)2, which helped it look beyond its direct footprint and into the ecosystems surrounding its sites. The results provided new insights: seven locations lie close to protected areas, and many operate near habitats that support hundreds of vulnerable species – 207 critically endangered, 549 endangered, and 1.229 classified as vulnerable. These insights are now shaping how Hager makes decisions, from site development to identifying opportunities for positive impact. For further information please refer to the Annexure IV.
Looking ahead, biodiversity will remain an ongoing focus. By repeating the assessments every three years and acting on these findings, Hager aims to continuously refine its approach, ensuring that its actions not only reduce harm but actively contribute to healthier, more resilient ecosystems.
7.2
Water
Water is a fundamental resource underpinning both Hager’s operations and the wellbeing of communities and ecosystems worldwide. Prudent water stewardship therefore forms a core part of Hager’s commitment to sustainability, even though water has not been classified as a material topic in the materiality assessments, and Hager’s sites are actively pursuing tangible improvements in how water is managed, treated, and conserved.
Evolution of water withdrawal
by source, 2023–2025
Hager’s efforts to prevent storage tank leakage and enhance rainwater harvesting continued through 2025. A telling example of this commitment is underway at the Bischwiller site, France, where a project to connect storage tanks to building gutters and channelling collected rainwater directly to vegetated areas is reducing dependence on the freshwater supply. Taken together, these and similar initiatives enabled Hager to achieve an annual reduction of 20,5 ML in freshwater consumption in 2025, compared to 2024.
At Hager’s Tychy site, Poland, a 2025 ventilation unit replacement offered a similar opportunity for improvement. The previous configuration relied on an open-loop sprinkler system that sprayed water directly onto the cooling equipment before discharging it to the sewage network, a process that resulted in significant and continuous water loss. The replacement unit operates on a fully closed-loop circuit, eliminating this water use entirely and delivering an estimated saving of approximately 532 m³ per year.
Over recent years, water consumption has significantly declined, dropping from 292,3 ML in 2021 down to 237 ML by 2025. This represents a 19% reduction in water use. For further detail on water consumption please refer to Annexure IV.
Furthermore, according to last year’s water scarcity assessment, two Hager manufacturing sites are situated in areas categorised as high or extremely high water-stress basins. To identify such areas, Hager used the WWF Risk Filter Suite – Baseline Water Stress Map3.
7.3
Waste management
ESRS E5-1 E5-2 E5-3 E5-5 GRI 306
Waste reduction is essential for mitigating biosphere impacts. In recent years, significant improvements to Hager’s data collection methodology have provided a clearer and more granular picture of the waste generated across its operations and how it is disposed of. To further strengthen this foundation, Hager has initiated an action to harmonise waste data reporting across all sites, consolidating local data into a common structure and mapping waste codes to standardised definitions, enabling improved benchmarking and, in the future, the development of Group-level waste targets.
Hager continued to strengthen its approach to waste management, focusing on reducing overall waste volumes and improving waste treatment practices across all operations. While manufacturing activities inevitably generate both non-hazardous and hazardous waste, Hager increasingly designs processes and encourages site-level initiatives that actively reduce waste volumes and improve the quality of waste treatment. For example, at the Lyon distribution centre, France, clean surplus cardboard is collected and redistributed to other sites rather than disposed of, directly reducing both waste volumes and procurement needs elsewhere. Similarly, at the Vendenheim site in France, backing paper generated during operations is sorted and channelled into recycling rather than general waste disposal. These initiatives reflect Hager’s broader ambition to move from waste disposal towards resource recovery, sharing best practices across sites and progressively extending them at Group level.
Evolution of waste generated
by waste type, 2023–2025
In 2025, Hager generated a total of 20 kilotonnes of waste, covering categories such as WEEE and hazardous waste. Of this amount, around 97% was non-hazardous, with metal waste emerging as the most prominent component.
Compared to 2023, a noticeable drop was observed in overall waste generation. This trend was especially clear for metal, plastic, and cardboard waste, which saw reductions of approximately 28%, 34%, and 64% over three years, reflecting Hager’s continued efforts to limit environmental impact and improve waste management strategies.
Hazardous waste followed the opposite trend and increased by approximately 12% in the reporting year compared to 2023, despite having fallen in 2024.
Recycling remains Hager’s preferred treatment route across all non-hazardous waste streams. For the highest-volume materials, i.e. metal, plastic, and copper, the vast majority was channelled back into the recycling loop, reflecting our commitment to keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible. Copper and WEEE waste followed the same path. Where recycling was not feasible, such as for wood, paper, and normal industrial waste mix, materials were managed responsibly through incineration and landfill.
Of the 645 tonnes of hazardous waste generated, 443 tonnes were diverted to landfill, with smaller volumes treated through incineration and recycling. Further details of the waste management data can be found in Annexure IV.
Waste treatment
by waste types in 2025
Local waste management initiative
High-quality waste sorting
Ongoing
Goal: To ensure waste is sorted at source to the highest possible standard, maximising material recovery and recycling rates across all major waste streams.
Scope: Manufacturing and logistics sites visited as part of Hager’s Group-level waste diagnostic (Blieskastel and Heltersberg in Germany, and Obernai and Vendenheim in France).
Actions taken: Hager sites maintain dedicated, clearly labelled containers for a wide range of distinct material streams, including ferrous and non-ferrous metals, copper alloys, plastic films, cardboard, hazardous liquids, and electronic waste. This granular separation at source ensures that materials are directed to the most appropriate recovery or recycling route, avoids cross-contamination between streams, and supports the accuracy of Hager’s waste reporting data. The quality of sorting observed across sites forms the basis for Hager’s ongoing efforts to maintain and extend these standards to further locations.
Structured end-of-life product treatment process
Ongoing
Goal: To ensure that finished products reaching end of life are handled through a controlled, traceable, and formally governed process, from identification through to final treatment.
Scope: Hager manufacturing and logistics sites in Blieskastel, Heltersberg, Obernai, and Vendenheim.
Actions taken: Hager has implemented a structured process for managing end-of-life finished products. The process includes formal verification of authorised signatories, systematic registration of products and their origin, and organised assignment to the appropriate treatment route. Each scrapping decision is documented through dedicated record forms, ensuring full traceability from the point of identification to final disposal or recovery. This approach strengthens Hager’s internal governance, supports regulatory compliance, and provides reliable data for both environmental reporting and cost-of-poor-quality tracking, reinforcing Hager’s commitment to responsible and transparent waste management.
Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) are sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity, identified based on standardised criteria related to threatened species, ecosystems, and ecological integrity. The KBA framework is coordinated by the KBA Partnership, which includes organisations such as BirdLife International, IUCN, and Conservation International. More details are available at www.keybiodiversityareas.org.
The Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) is a web-based decision-support tool that provides access to global biodiversity datasets, including those from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), and Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA). It supports businesses, financial institutions, and governments in assessing biodiversity risks and opportunities during planning and decision-making processes. More information can be found at www.ibat-alliance.org.
Any discrepancies between individual values and totals are attributable to rounding adjustments and do not affect the underlying data accuracy.
This supplementary non-material disclosure was added to meet the data demand of a specific user of the sustainability statement and does not result from the materiality assessment.
Any discrepancies between individual values and totals are attributable to rounding adjustments and do not affect the underlying data accuracy.