Stakeholder Dialog

• Continuous dialog with our stakeholders
• Circular economy: chemical recycling of plastic waste

Our stakeholders include customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders, as well as representatives from academia, industry, politics and society. Parts of our business activities, such as the use of new technologies, are often viewed by some stakeholders with a critical eye. In order to increase societal acceptance for our business activities, we address our stakeholders’ questions, assess our business activities in terms of sustainability aspects, and communicate transparently. Such dialogs help us to even better understand what society expects of us and which measures we need to pursue in order to establish and maintain trust and build partnerships.

We use a custom model to identify key stakeholders and involve them more effectively. When selecting our stakeholders, we assess factors such as their topic-specific expertise and willingness to engage in constructive dialog, for instance. We draw on the competence of global initiatives and networks, and contribute our own expertise.

That is why we are active in worldwide initiatives with various stakeholder groups. We have been a member of the U.N. Global Compact since 2000. As a recognized LEAD company, we also support the implementation of the Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals. We are involved in projects such as the U.N. Global Compact’s Action Platforms on Decent Work in Global Supply Chains (SDG 8) and on Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3), and are a member of the U.N. Global Compact Expert Network. BASF is also active in 14 local Global Compact networks, including – for the first time – the United States and Tanzania since 2018.

We once again met with the Stakeholder Advisory Council in 2018 to discuss important aspects of sustainability. The main topics were strengthening sustainability in the corporate strategy, such as the discussion on the new sustainability goals. We received and implemented recommendations for our thematic focus areas. For example, the Stakeholder Advisory Council encouraged us to push forward with the circular economy as a strategic focus, where BASF developed a chemical recycling method for plastic waste. As part of the ChemCycling pilot project, the first pyrolysis oil derived from plastic waste by our partners was fed into the BASF Verbund in 2018.

Our lobbying and political communications are conducted in accordance with transparent guidelines and our publicly stated positions. BASF does not financially support political parties. In the United States, employees at BASF Corporation have exercised their right to establish a Political Action Committee (PAC). The BASF Corporation Employee PAC is a voluntary, federally registered employee association founded in 1998. It collects donations for political purposes and independently decides how these are used, in accordance with U.S. law.

We have a particular responsibility toward our production sites’ neighbors. With the established community advisory panels, we promote open exchange between citizens and our site management and strengthen trust in our activities. Our globally binding requirements for community advisory panels at our sites are based on the grievance mechanism standards in the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We keep track of their implementation through the existing global databank of the Responsible Care Management System, which was further expanded in the regions in 2018.