GN’s Sustainability Statement is reported based on the same consolidation principles as the financial statements, covering all GN divisions, markets, and global levels.

GN’s Sustainability Statement is reported based on the same consolidation principles as the financial statements, covering all GN divisions, markets, and global levels.

Following the materiality assessment and due diligence processes, this Sustainability Statement covers all upstream and downstream value chain activities.

In scoring impacts, we gave equal weight to the three factors constituting severity combined (scale, scope, and irremediable character), and likelihood, prioritizing negative impacts based on their relative severity and likelihood. For impacts in our own operations, we assessed ESG impacts related to our assets, and core activities: hearing aid component assembly in Denmark, manufacturing of hearing aids in China and Malaysia, final assembly of hearing aids in regional operational centers, R&D and product testing, sales and external collaboration, and white-collar back-office functions for all GN divisions. We also considered secondary activities in support of these core activities. For our value chain impacts, we prioritized assessing six value chain industries on which GN’s business model depends which have heightened risk of adverse ESG impacts: mining, plastic and aluminum production, paper production, freight and business travel, electronics manufacturing, and e-waste treatment. For pollution, biodiversity, and water-related sub-topics, we used geographical impact and industry reports in our assessment. This enabled us to understand the material impacts of our own sites, the location of our suppliers and sub-suppliers across our value chain on the surrounding ecosystem and communities, as well as the degree to which we depend on the local ecosystem for our business model. This process led to several sub-topics in the area of pollution to be considered material to GN from an impact perspective, whereas all sub-topics related to biodiversity and water were considered not material from an impact perspective. We also used the above sources to assess the materiality of sub-topics related to resource use and circular economy, as impacts in this area are ultimately also linked to impacts on nature through pollution, water impacts, or biodiversity loss. In addition, for resource use and circular economy, we specifically scored the (potential) impacts of our business model in terms of the circularity and sustainability of resource inflows (i.e. the materials we use in our products and packaging), resource outflows (i.e. to what extent our products and services are set up to enable circularity), and waste caused by our business model. This process led to several sub-topics in this area to be considered material to GN from an impact perspective.