For goals and planned key actions for 2024, please refer to the full Combined Annual Report 2023.
Businesses can only grow sustainably in a healthy environment and stable society. To foster its role as a socially responsible company, Borealis established the Borealis Social Fund in 2008.
Each year, the Group dedicates a portion of its net profit to the Fund, based on clearly defined allocation rules. Any external or internal stakeholder can propose a project to the Sustainability Team, which validates the proposal and makes recommendations to the CEO, who is responsible for the Fund and selects and approves all projects. The Chairperson or Deputy Chairperson of the Supervisory Board must also approve sponsorships above EUR 0.5 million per project per year.
Borealis has defined three areas of social engagement that directly contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Focusing on these areas helps to maximize Borealis’ impact and aligns its activities with its Purpose and Group Strategy.
Environmental pollution due to littering is a global challenge, with millions of metric tons of plastic waste leaking into the environment and oceans every year. The problem arises because globally only around 9% of plastic is recycled, with about 50% landfilled, 19% incinerated and 22% dumped or burned in the open environment. While all regions will see plastic waste increase in the future, the OECD Global Plastics Outlook expects it to more than quadruple in Asia and Africa by 2060, as the population grows and living standards rise. Mismanaged waste is a major problem in the region, as it harms ocean ecosystems, human health and livelihoods, and sustainable development more broadly.
An important part of the solution is to accelerate the transformation towards a circular economy, by establishing low-cost, efficient and circular waste management systems to stop waste leakage at source. Borealis and Systemiq co-founded Project STOP in 2017 to help municipalities create these waste management systems, with broad support from national and regional governments, international institutions, academia and the private sector. Since it began in Indonesia, Project STOP has steadily expanded from the city of Muncar to two more cities, Pasuruan and Jembrana. In addition, in 2023 Borealis entered a partnership with Ecopost to drive circular economy in Kenya.
Project STOP focuses on delivering measurable impact on the ground. Its concept is that sustainable transformation can only be achieved through a holistic approach that addresses all system failures at once. The project’s systemic approach therefore works on all levels, including setting up a waste collection and sorting system across the entire city, building the necessary infrastructure, establishing a sustainable financing model, strengthening institutional capacity and the regulatory environment, rolling out behavior-change campaigns and beach clean-ups, providing technical expertise and support in project management, and recycling valorization.
To ensure that valuable material does not end up in the environment, Project STOP collects all organic and inorganic waste fractions, including plastics. Moreover, it benefits the community by creating new full-time jobs in waste management and reducing the harm to public health, tourism and fisheries.
Once established, the system is formally handed over to the municipality. To ensure the system remains effective after handover, Project STOP has developed a comprehensive program to train municipal employees in the three cities. The Project STOP team also remains available for support and advice. While the costs of collecting and sorting waste are currently covered by selling materials and waste collection service fees, it is crucial that the system is sustainably financed in the long term. This means continuing to increase the value of waste, creating a market for recycled materials and fostering a circular economy. To reinforce the financing model, Project STOP has started work on novel financing instruments.
Project STOP’s ambition is to enable as many stakeholders as possible to replicate its approach in other regions, by developing a blueprint and sharing its know-how. The knowledge gained from the three city partnerships is now allowing the project to scale up across Banyuwangi, a Regency in Indonesia with around 1.7 million inhabitants, while being faster, lower cost and using fewer resources to implement.
The expansion program began in early 2023 and has three phases, which are planned to complete by the end of 2026. By that time, Project STOP aims to positively impact the lives of up to 2 million residents, create 1,000 full-time jobs and collect 230,000 metric tons of waste annually, including 25,000 metric tons of plastic.
A key highlight in 2023 was the inauguration of a newly constructed material recovery facility (MRF) in Songgon Municipality, Banyuwangi, East Java. The MRF is one of the largest of its kind in Indonesia and an important milestone towards building the country’s first Regency-led circular waste management system. The new MRF will collect and sort all waste from households in the region, including materials to be recycled, and can process up to 84 metric tons a day. At full scale, the MRF will process around 3,300 metric tons of plastic waste per year by 2025.
Achievements since start of Project STOP 1) by the end of 2023:
1) numbers calculated until hand-over to the local city authorities
Ecopost is a Kenya-based social enterprise that addresses the challenges of urban waste management, plastic pollution and youth unemployment. Borealis and Ecopost share a vision of enhancing circularity, to stop waste leaking into the environment and create positive socioeconomic and environmental impact. The two companies are therefore collaborating, with Borealis funding Ecopost’s activities to boost waste recycling in Kenya and promote a circular economy, in line with the UN SDGs.
Kenya faces significant economic and environmental challenges. These include more than one third of the population living below the poverty line, the need to address waste management, as well as the growing demand for building materials, which is leading to deforestation. Ecopost addresses all three challenges, through a scalable and replicable model. It collects plastic waste and recycles it into eco-friendly alternatives to fossil-based plastics, for applications such as fencing, signage and building materials. In doing so, it diverts waste from landfill, open burning or dumping in waterways and sewers, and provides an alternative material to timber.
Ecopost also helps to address poverty, by creating jobs for operators and distributors, and providing a fair and regular income for waste pickers, who are the most important people in the recycling value chain. In Kenya, waste picking is often an informal role performed by women. They are exposed to being underpaid for the waste they collect, as middlemen who sell the collected waste to recyclers typically capture the majority of the sales margin. Ecopost therefore formalizes the waste picking community by working with marginalized youth and women’s groups, who collect, sort, shred and prepare waste material for producing pellets and plastic lumber.
To achieve impact at scale, Ecopost provides training and capacity building across the value chain. Borealis is supporting this capacity building by training and engaging more waste collectors, as well as formalizing their work by funding entrepreneurial start-up kits for the youth and women’s groups.
Ecopost mainly produces posts for fencing, for customers such as ranches, government departments (such as Kenya Wildlife Services), and retailers for farmers. Another product segment is posts for signs, which are delivered to traffic sign producers (as suppliers to the government) and wholesalers (as suppliers to private companies).
Since its inception, Ecopost has recycled 13,000 metric tons of plastic collected from urban dumpsites and industrial and household waste. This has saved 4,500 acres of trees, by providing an alternative raw material to wood for producing signposts and fencing. As a consequence, 160,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent could be saved in total. By providing work for the operators, plastic waste collectors, transporters, distributors and installation technicians, Ecopost has created 102 direct jobs and roughly 12,000 indirect jobs.
Ecopost also supports communities by sponsoring school visits to the factory, having hosted 120 sessions to date. As part of its Entrepreneurship & Women Empowerment initiative, Ecopost has enabled the procurement of shredders and balers for 31 groups across Kenya and Tanzania, with each group consisting of 15 to 25 members, who are mostly young people and women.
The food supplies, health, livelihoods, and education of poor families all depend on having access to water and energy.
However, the United Nations estimates that worldwide, one in three people lack safe drinking water and two-fifths do not have basic handwashing facilities, especially in remote, rural areas. In addition, 789 million people – or 13% of the global population – do not have access to electricity and 3 billion people rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating. Drought is a particular problem, as it harms food supplies in some of the world’s poorest countries and leaves people hungry and malnourished.
Energy services are also vital for good health, whether they are enabling clean water supplies or powering healthcare facilities. This makes energy key to preventing diseases and fighting pandemics.
Since 2008, Borealis and Borouge have provided solutions through Water for the World, a joint program to address the global water and energy challenge in rural and urban communities, with a focus on South-East Asia and Africa. The program cooperates with non-profit organizations and supports numerous projects, including in China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nepal, Morocco, Myanmar and Pakistan, benefiting over one million people since its inception.
Water for the World celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023. While the program is based on a joint vision and global concept, Borealis and Borouge follow different but complementary approaches, tailored to the footprint of their organizations and local needs.
Borouge’s footprint is in Asia and the Middle East, where the challenges include water scarcity and the need to extend water infrastructure to remote areas. Its projects therefore address these issues in the region, with Borouge employees working with local or national NGOs.
Borealis’ main footprint is in Europe, where the primary challenge is water leaking from old infrastructure. The Group focuses on raising awareness, for example through water roadshows and exhibitions, and by supporting the Stockholm Water Prize. It also looks to increase knowledge in areas such as preventing water leaking from aging infrastructure, sustainable water practices in agriculture or calculating the world’s first water footprint for plastics. In addition, since 2007 Borealis has partnered with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), providing funding and material to support its engagement in Africa.
In 2017, Water for the World extended its program to include renewable energy infrastructure, with a first project in Myanmar to install photovoltaic modules in a hospital in Kanni, followed by a project in Uganda.
In 15 years, the world has changed. Today’s challenges include the consequences of climate change such as increased natural disasters, floods and droughts. Therefore, during 2024 the program will be reviewed, and the conceptual approach and project portfolio will be adapted, to meet current and future societal needs.
* WSUP: Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor; OFID: OPEC Fund
Achievements by end of 2023
Since it began in 2007, Water for the World has:
Young people’s education, innovation skills and critical minds will determine whether society finds solutions to complex global sustainability challenges, such as climate change, plastic waste and increasing migration.
Stimulating enthusiasm for science and chemistry at an early age means that today’s young and inquisitive minds will become tomorrow’s leading scientists and innovators. Education also enables migrants and underprivileged people to integrate into society, as well as supporting equality and inclusiveness and maintaining a stable democracy.
Educational systems therefore need to adopt a framework and practices that ensure young people develop the right skills, so they can put their ideas into practice, think independently and provide access to quality information for all. However, according to a UNESCO Institute of Statistics report in 2019, 258 million children and youth do not have access to education, 23% who are of primary school age, 24% of lower secondary school age and 53% of upper secondary school age. This is due to low public financing, poverty, war and other socioeconomic factors.
Borealis therefore created Growing Talent. Projects include Borealis’ scholarships for migrants and underprivileged people, and providing better access to applied chemistry and science, for example via open chemistry labs, children’s summer camps, and innovative education institutions such as the Austrian ZOOM Children’s Museum, the Science Centre Network, the Finnish Company Park and the Emirates National School in the UAE.
Borealis has been one of the main sponsors of the ZOOM Children’s Museum in Vienna, Austria, since 2013. The Museum and Borealis share a common goal of helping the young generation to make complex sustainability issues understandable, getting them excited about science and research, and sharpening their skills for future challenges.
Following the successful “PLASTICS” exhibition in 2015 and “EARTH & SOIL” in 2019, the Borealis Social Fund and ZOOM celebrated the opening of a new hands-on exhibition, “WELCOME TO THE FUTURE!”, in 2023. The exhibition deals with the sustainability challenges of tomorrow’s world and ZOOM has transformed the exhibition hall into a Future Lab, where artists, scientists and experts from many areas have contributed their ideas. ZOOM welcomes children to ask questions and to touch, feel, examine and play. In their own way, they zoom in on objects and situations and, by doing so, find out about themselves and discover their skills, abilities, and creativity.
The economic crisis caused by the Ukraine war has driven up inflation and interest rates, with households facing higher bills for food, rent and other essentials, as well as spending more on servicing loans and other debts. As a result, an increasing number of people are at risk of eviction and homelessness, having their electricity and heating cut off, or being unable to pay for essential medication. In 2023, the Borealis Social Fund therefore partnered with the Austrian Red Cross to launch the Borealis Immediate Aid Fund (Borealis ISH Fonds), to provide fast and unbureaucratic financial aid to people in Austria facing financial emergencies. Based on a needs analysis, the fund focuses on helping young families and elderly people in situations where no other support is available. In addition to receiving financial aid, recipients benefit from a consultation with the Austrian Red Cross, to help them avoid similar situations in the future.
Achievement by end of 2023
Since Borealis established the Social Fund, Growing Talent has partnered with organizations in almost 10 countries, reaching out to more than 1,100,000 people.
Borealis stands in solidarity with those affected by natural catastrophes, pandemics or war. In addition to its three focus areas, the Borealis Social Fund therefore provides support in crisis situations, in the form of money, materials, expertise or its people’s time.
Continuing earlier donations for emergency situations in the past, in 2023 the Fund supported those affected by the Türkiye and Syria earthquake in February, by contributing to a container city in Adana, Türkiye, which was set up to house families temporarily while the area was being rebuilt. Borealis contributed to 34 of the 200 containers.
