How does EEW Energy from Waste GmbH approach sustainability?

A good sustainability report improves financial rating, bankability, and credit terms.

How does EEW Energy from Waste GmbH reduce waste?

Waste incineration releases carbon but destroys pollutants and shrinks landfill volumes.

How does EEW Energy from Waste GmbH approach sustainability?

To bring colleagues onboard, start with their real problems, not sustainability vocabulary.

What company is discussed in this episode?

This episode features EEW Energy from Waste GmbH and their approach to circular economy.

Sustainability Reporting: Turning ESG into Decisions

May 26, 2026

0:00

How does ESG reporting influence how a company is financed, run, and perceived?

in this episode, Fabian Böhmer, Head of Sustainability at EEW, joins Patrick to discuss how ESG reporting can serve bankability, reputation, and internal decision-making.

What you’ll hear:

Why the business case matters in sustainability, and what happens when ecological, social, and economic dimensions are treated as one balanced system rather than competing priorities
What CSRD, ESRS, and the EU taxonomy actually require, and the difference between treating them as a reporting burden and using them as a strategic tool
How to make sustainability work land internally with different functions: the language that gets operations, finance, and the board on board

The episode also covers how green bonds and ESG-linked credit conditions are reshaping the cost of capital, and why focus matters more than completeness when reporting to multiple stakeholders.

This is the fifth episode of the series Incineration in the Circular Economy, sponsored by NEEW Ventures.

Video Impression

People

Fabian Böhmer, Head of Sustainability at EEW
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-b%C3%B6hmer/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:26 A sustainability report for your private life?
04:44 The triangle of sustainability
10:23 Landfilling vs waste-to-energy
14:29 Why landfilling still wins on cost
19:21 What happens to the residues
23:09 The waste hierarchy
25:09 Bringing the three dimensions together
31:22 The sustainability report under new regulation
38:16 Communicating with all stakeholders
43:38 The financial value of a good report
48:54 Hacks for bringing colleagues onboard
52:48 Closing

About

EEW Energy from Waste GmbH (EEW) is one of Europe’s leading companies in the field of thermal waste and sewage sludge recovery. Today, EEW makes an important contribution to climate and resource protection and is therefore an essential part of the circular economy. At the company’s 17 current sites, around 5 million tonnes of waste per year can be used for energy recovery.

More than 1,400 employees take responsibility for using the energy in waste, reducing waste volumes, safely and harmlessly eliminating hazards from waste, and recycling scrap metal and composite materials. In addition, the energy contained in waste is used efficiently to generate process steam for industrial plants, district heating for residential areas and electricity produced in an environmentally friendly way.

Further Links

https://www.neew-ventures.com/

https://www.eew-energyfromwaste.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro

Fabian Böhmer: We burn waste, we release carbon emissions to save climate.

Jingle: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.

Patrick Hypscher: You are listening to the fifth episode of the series Incineration in the Circular Economy. In the last episode, Jörn Jakob, Director Innovation of EEW, explained how EEW captures the emission from the incineration process. In this episode, we focus on sustainability, in particular on the discussion between landfilling and waste to energy, as well as the value of a good sustainability report. This conversation here contains a lot of learnings.

If you want to get these summarized in one page, sign up to our newsletter. You can find it at www.circularity.fm.

He has an academic background in geology, tourist management, and economics. He wrote his bachelor thesis about sustainable communication in the airline industry. After several years as ESG consultant and sustainability manager in the insurance industry, he joined EEW. For more than one year, he is EEW’s head of sustainability. Welcome, Fabian.

Fabian Böhmer: Thank you very much, Patrick. Pleasure to join.

[00:01:26] A sustainability report for your private life?

Patrick Hypscher: Fabian, you’re in charge of the sustainability report of EEW, which is about to be released pretty soon. And thanks for making time and these days for our interview. I always start with a personal question and this one is about reporting. Do you have a sustainability report for your private life?

Fabian Böhmer: That’s a mean question for the beginning, to be honest. But of course working and sustainability normally brings up those

Do you track?

During the last well over 10 years working in sustainability, I merely checked out every kind of personal footprint calculator that exists. So I’m well aware of my personal footprint, if we take this seriously. But to be honest, I’m not a fully sustainable person. I would say I’m a normal person. I do fly to holidays. I do drive a lot in a car, although it’s an electric car for work.

But it’s this is not a problem for me. It’s possible to explain why not every person needs to be fully sustainable to work in sustainability. For me it’s more important to understand my co the consequences of my decisions. And that’s the core that I think a lot of more people in the society needs to be aware of. What is the consequence of what I do? And in the end, I believe.

Sustainability is not about everyone living perfectly sustainable, because that’s not really possible. It’s more about systemic changes in the society. So personal decisions matter, but it’s more or less something that needs to be changed from the whole system. Because I still believe economy still rewards our short term thinking, rewards our consumption that we have. And that’s very difficult to get out there.

And in the end, I think we all gain more if a lot of people take small steps, besides some people taking large steps. So for me it’s a systemic question and this has been established through all of my life working and sustainability. So yes, I get this question quite a lot. so thanks for that.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, yeah. And so for me it’s a bit the same. and I feel the struggle of finding a proper and adequate approach to personal sustainability and tracking it. It’s like a rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah. and sometimes I feel the professional rabbit hole with reporting and improving the company and the overall assistant, this is already enough. Yeah, keeps us busy for quite some time.

Fabian Böhmer: a fun fact all those personal footprint calculators or some of them have has been made very well known by the large oil companies when this whole talk came up there it’s something to blame the individual here for being very unsustainable and look at you you’re not in line with what we should achieve and yeah so it was some kind of a strategy it’s still important but it’s not the whole equation for me.

[00:04:44] The triangle of sustainability

Patrick Hypscher: Definitely, definitely. You already mentioned a lot the term sustainability. And I mean we’re here we’re talking as part of a series at the beginning. If we got an understanding how a waste incineration plant works, Sebastian Sievers told us where it sits in the energy system and the waste system and the circular economy. Learn some more d details about waste here as an innovative company that helps us to use waste efficiently.

talked about carbon capture. and now we want to add this sustainable like it feels like it’s a bit the elephant in the room because when we talk about waste incineration, that of course has to do with sustainability, but we never talked about it yet. So therefore I’m pretty happy that the two of us are talking about now. So and before we dive into deep the details, what is your understanding of sustainability in that context? Well

Fabian Böhmer: My understanding of sustainable sustainability is pretty much shaped by the understanding of the triangle of sustainability. So that’s a model that has been long established, but I still believe it’s not so well known because we talk a lot about ESG, we talk about economic, we talk about ecological sustainability, we talk about governance, but the core is the triangle of sustainability with three dimensions: the ecologic sustainability, very important.

social sustainability very important. But the third dimension is the economic sustainability. So a company is only sustainable if it’s in the middle, if it’s takes in into account ecological sustainability, social sustainability and the economic side. So it must be economically viable, because the question every company asks itself how can I achieve that I’m still there in fifty years? It’s only possible if it’s profitable.

Company. So these three dimensions must be balanced. That’s my pure understanding of sustainability. And that’s a very important message to the management that I always give. Whenever I think about sustainability or projects, I always have to take into account what’s the profit of it. Does it bring any profit or is the cost so high that maybe it will damage the company and the long-term perspective of the company? And this is

Also, my understanding that this is the core of transformation, this understanding. Because there’s another well-known paper in the sustainability world called the Business Case for Sustainability. When I started to get interested in sustainability around 2010 or something, I read quite a lot of papers. What’s coming up there? What’s sustainable development? And there was one paper that well shaped my view quite a lot by

Professor Schaltegger from the Leuphana in Lüneburg. He is very well known in the sustainability world. And well, he had this thesis that the business case for sustainability is a core for sustainable development. Because whenever a company is doing something for sustainability for the economic side, it must always take into account the economic view. Because why? Only if a company is successful in its business by being sustainable, other companies will follow them. So this is how

core transformation works. You have some companies that show it’s possible. We are profitable, but we also take the ecologic side very much into account and the social side. So we’re very much balanced in this triangle of sustainability, but we’re also profitable with it. And this is when other companies and other management boards say, look, that’s possible. That’s great. Let’s try to achieve this as well. And this is how we can well bring it into the broader economic world, not only in some

unicorn companies that achieve this. So this is why I believe because the profitability of sustainability work is always very important, must be also a center focus for sustainability management.

So that’s also true, of course, for EEW, because you already heard some episodes with our colleagues. You know what we do, we’re a waste incinerator, we’re an industry company, we’re an infrastructure company. And this is also clear that well, there won’t be no impacts at all in an industry company. There will always be some kind of impacts. We can try to minimize impacts, but there always will be some kind of impacts. And the core of my work is.

to make those impacts visible, measurable and transparent, to be able to steer those impacts and the trade offs better in the future. So this is the core of sustainability work for me, to put it in some sentences. I could go into details much more, but happy to get questions from you on this.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, I can totally relate to your first point about the business case because and that’s also the very reason why Circularity.fm is about business models. because I believe this ecological and social impact has to go hand in hand with the economic dimension to reach a certain scale, right? Let’s stick to the impacts you mentioned towards the end to make them transparent. One of the

Bigger questions for everyone not so much familiar with end of life treatment is the discussion between landfilling and incineration. So what’s better?

[00:10:23] Landfilling vs waste-to-energy

Fabian Böhmer: Well, for me, there’s only one answer, of course. with better any end, but this question is, of course, a little bit more tricky because here it’s a question of trade-offs, of course. landfilling, well, it’s basic, it’s forbidden in Germany without proper incineration before that, because there are some very good reasons that landfilling is not a perfect option. one of it is that it’s very harmful to the climate, because the biodegradable share of the

waste can create methane emissions over long term which is much more harmful than cre than our short-term impact by releasing carbon emissions from the waste directly so this is why incineration basically is the standard in Germany because we want to well save the environment save climate through it so that’s a difficult question to answer we burn waste we

Release carbon emissions to save climate. but that’s only a small part of the equation for me. It’s not only about carbon emissions. Of course, when we talk about waste incinerations, that’s the most pressing point. Everyone takes carbon emissions into account. But as I mentioned earlier, we need to make trade-offs visible. And here, waste incineration do does have quite a lot of more positive impacts on your environment than only.

Methane emissions. For example, the sanitation of pollutants. Well, our waste is not pollutant-free, to be honest. When we just throw it onto big landfills, it releases those pollutants into the environment. Let’s talk about dioxins, furans, PFAS is a new topic that’s coming up. So very, very strong pollutants that are very unhealthy. And waste incineration has one of the main purposes of destroying those pollutants.

That’s why we have to hold several certain degrees to be sure that all those pollutants are destroyed during the process. So that’s a very important positive impact that landfilling cannot well deliver in the end. Then we have a large re reduction of volumes in the waste, of course. After the incineration, we still have some re residues, but it’s much more or less than landfilling. and well, of course.

We have a long-term land use when we throw all the garbage that we still have. The these amounts are crazy that we have in Germany and all over the world. when we just throw them on big landfills, the land use is crazy over the long term. So by reducing this volume of the waste, we still achieve something good for the environment, for the society in the end. And well, yes.

This is some trade-offs you have to bring together. So we have a negative impact by releasing carbon emissions, but we have quite a lot of positive impacts that landfilling cannot deliver in the end. This is why it’s always better to incinerate and recover the energy out of it and the residual materials that we still have than only throw it on landfills. Now there are some discussions coming up. There are more modern landfills, so it’s always important who do I compare to against? A very modern

great waste to energy plant, for example, against an old landfall, it’s totally clear what’s the better option, of course. also the landfills they got better over the last decades, but I still don’t believe that when we take a look out of sight of our bubble in Germany, for example, that all over the world we have perfect landfills that fulfill all safety requirements. We have enough space for everything.

So I think waste incineration is still very much underestimated with its power for the environment. And

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, I was exactly about to ask that, so why are there still so many countries not cheaper doing that?

[00:14:29] Why landfilling still wins on cost

Fabian Böhmer: It’s cheaper when you have when have the room, you can just throw it on there and that’s it. so for waste to energy plants, of course, it’s an infrastructure, it’s highly regulated. the very technical plants crazy what techniques work inside there. so yeah, it’s much cheaper to just throw it on a big landfill, of course. But it’s not the best way for the environment. And we cannot forget that also we will recover the energy.

This is a very important game changer, being able to get all the energy out of it that’s in waste than just throwing out on landfills. Yes, landfills try to capture the gas and use the gas, so there is also some kind of energy recovery. but in the equation, it’s always better to well use a high high performing waste to energy plant in the end.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, and if I may add, you and some of the listeners may know, last summer I did a series in Kenya about circular economy in Kenya. And as you mentioned, the energy, it’s also important to take into account in what kind of culture and economy you’re looking at waste and saturation versus landfilling, because in Kenya, for example, they have a lot of geothermal energy already, which is kind of renewable. they have

higher temperatures, they have much more sun. So when it comes to electricity consumption from renewable resources, they have a totally different starting position. so there’s I would say so. I think they have a renewable energy quota of 80% already. Yeah, so there is I don’t know the prices, yeah. And then of course, energy prices are always too expensive, yeah. but

There is a different situation from the demand perspective. I guess it would be pretty challenging for a waste incineration plant to sell energy there, which is kind of green because the competitive landscape is different. and you don’t even have a collection system. Yeah, we talked with Sebastian about gate fees and burning the waste. So you need an infrastructure to get the waste to the gates. and if this is not

existing then also the business case for waste conservation is

Fabian Böhmer: Smaller,

but they still have waste problems to solve. So so yeah, it’s what Africa, there are other countries that do take into account waste incineration would maybe good for would be good for us. so what’s interesting, the G twenty presidency will change soon to South Africa and the actual working groups they’re working on their priorities for the new presidency and they bring waste to energy up because they have a waste problem and they have an energy problem in South Africa.

And I’m a big fan of the Pareto principle. So saying let’s get whole world higher than only the last highest performing countries. And I still there is a I still believe there’s a lot of potential in a lot of countries all over the world where adding waste incineration would serve the environment, would serve the climate and would serve the people in the end, by being able to release

baseload energy from their own resource they produce. And that’s something that our CEO always presses will waste. Can be treated as a resource. It’s one of the only resources basically have in Germany here, which we produce. And well we’ve had we’ve seen the last weeks with the Near East clash and the Strait of Hormuz how much energy dependency is a big problem for from for every country still.

We have a small solution to add some more of independency in the energy creation. So that’s something that’s more and more recognized that our energy is very worthy. for example, for the heat, for the heat transformation. it’s not so easy, it’s easier to produce electricity renewably than put them produce heat. District heating, for example, process steaming and so on. And here waste incineration is

a viable way for small parts, not for everything, of course, but it provides flexible energy. And this is why a lot of municipalities in Germany start to look and say, okay, we have waste, why don’t we use it as a heat source in the future, as a part of our sustainable heat transition. So that’s something that’s more now visible that those discussions come up and this makes the business model of waste incineration

More and more viable.

[00:19:21] What happens to the residues

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, I wanna come back to one aspect you mentioned, and this is the residue. so the waste doesn’t disappear. so what happens? So wha what are what kinds of residues are we talking about and what happens to them?

Fabian Böhmer: Well, as you just said, it doesn’t disappear. It’s there. It’s a lot of waste, quite a lot of tons. at least for household waste in Germany. We have about fifty million tons every year. So everyone from us need produces half a ton of household waste over the year still. So it’s quite high numbers and they don’t disappear. But what we do, we transform it and concentrate it as I just mentioned, do

the volume reduction is quite an important benefit of our business model that from these 50 million tons we reduce it much much more to very small parts of residues but of course we have to be realistic here there are still residues that come out so for example bottom ash fly ash and one thing that we also have is

Residues from the flue gas cleaning. all of our plants they work with high technical standards flue gas cleaning. So all the air stream is cleaned using chemicals, and there are some residuals that are left over that have to be landfilled or put into large caverns, for example. So we need to be to that. There are still final sinks needed, to be honestly.

But what we do or what we work on is how we can we reduce this even further. And the first important step is we try to get everything out of those residues that still create some worth. For example, metals. We get metals out. when I’m in one of our plants, what always what I always see is an old mattress being in the dump. So with all the springs inside, you know.

and after burning it, the springs they fall out of the burning of the out of the incinerator and you can just reuse the metals. You can melt them, you can reuse them. so that’s one part where we reduce now what has to go to landfills in the end. Again, the biodegradable part is out, so it’s only well it’s ash basically. It’s over, so it’s not so harmful anymore. The pollutants are killed, so they’re it’s not harmful anymore for the environment. What’s left

The of the waste. Then we get the mineral fractions out. So we have partners that take over the ash and they try to get everything out. Mineral fractions, for example, can be used in building streets, building autobans and so on. and then we have something that’s left, of course. And this has to be put into landfills or large underground caverns, for example.

And yes, that’s something that belongs but that belongs to our business model still. We can work on it to reduce this impact, but it’s difficult to fully solve this problem. But it’s still better than the alternative, because it’s much more less get rid of. Much, much more less.

Patrick Hypscher: And d do we I mean it’s like feels like an unfair question. if we still have enough capacities, because he said earlier it’s also about decreasing volume. So if we were to land fill the waste we would need even more capacities and but like underground cabins as you mentioned, so is there still enough space from coal mining or the old days?

[00:23:09] The waste hierarchy

Fabian Böhmer: Still enough space? But of course, it’s not there is final end to those spaces, but it that’s a future question. as mentioned with the Pareto concept, we talk about better options, we talk about the preferable options that we have at the moment. And to be clear, the best option that we have don’t create the waste. That’s pretty much clear. We’re working in the so called waste hierarchy, so we have steps that are much more preferable.

And as a waste incinerator, we fully, fully support this principle, of course. Best for the economy or for the society is that the waste is not produced in the beginning. Then, of course, the next step is try to reuse it as best as possible. then the third step is recycling. If you have waste, try to recycle it. This is what happens. And then we come into mind, because we are the fourth step, basically recovery options.

So what we do is recover. We do not dispose. That’s the difference against landfill sites. Against they dispose or we recover from the waste. And we come into place once all other three options are not possible anyway because the waste is produced, it cannot be reused. This is basically due to product design. where also the regulator still is actually working on to get better product design, to be able to reuse more.

or to recycle more, and we are not a counterpart for recycling or for reuse, of course. We have to be there when there is no other possibility from a technical side, from an economic side, for example. This is when we take over the non-recyclable waste and well, we transform it, we concentrate it, we reduce it, we get out all the pollutants, and then we have to think about the questions where do we put it?

So it’s the better options than the landfilling that we still have.

[00:25:09] Bringing the three dimensions together

Patrick Hypscher: At the very beginning you mentioned the three dimensions of sustainability, emphasizing the economic one and of course EEW is a private company that has to be profitable, wants to be profitable. So how do you bring these dimensions together?

Fabian Böhmer: Yes, I already said it at the beginning. That’s part of my work. It’s core of my work to try to bridge it together because sustainability is a word, a very big word that’s always up. And whenever I think about sustainability, I try to bring these three dimensions into my thinking, into my decision making and what’s the best steps. And I s I or my core message to everything is that those dimensions they enforce each other.

So when done right, when sustainability management works perfectly, it they enforce each other. And why is it so economically viable for us? well, it’s a business model that’s not well understood. You had you spoke with my colleagues, what happens, what we do, what are positive impacts, and this is not well known. And I have to be honest, when I learned about the position at EEW, I knew a client, I live in Hanover here, and we have a

one of our plants here and drove along quite a lot, quite some times and I say okay that there’s a plant, there is a chimney, some smoke comes out, they burn waste, that cannot be good, that cannot be great. And once I started to learn about the business model and dug into it, so you know I have an academic background also and I learned more about this business model. It’s crazy how my view changed on this business.

What’s worth of this business model? And it’s important that a lot of people change their view because why? We’re very much regulated, very much regulated company, by politics, by everything that happens at the European Union at the moment, and if the politicians don’t understand what we do, what’s the worth for parts of our business model, they decide against us.

They can kill a business model instantly if they do not understand it. That’s why EEW always had in mind we need to be transparent about our impact, need to be transparent about those trade-offs that we deliver, because otherwise it kill could kill our business model. It’s reputation. It’s a very important thing that allows us that delivers the license to operate to EEW if more people understand what we really do and what’s the benefit of our business model. This is

license to operate. This is why sustainability work is important. That is why EEW already reports for long years to sustainability. They have sustainability report since 2018, which is not long compared to much bigger companies, but it’s a very long time for a company a size of one thousand five hundred people. And they really understood really fast that the world is changing. The views are changing regarding sustainability and we need to be part of this view that we’re

Part of a solution, but we are not an enemy to sustainability, but we are a solution provider for all those changing environments that we see at the moment. So this is the first task, of course. We need to bring it the right messages into the right minds. So this is why stakeholder management is very important for me. Understand your stakeholders, know your stakeholders, know the messages that they that you can send, that they need to understand. And

My other priority or my motto is focus is key. Only provide those important messages to a stakeholder. Don’t over-report yourself, but be very focused on what you want to deliver, be very focused on the materiality perspectives. Otherwise, all those messages won’t be really understandable. And then comes the third part, which brings economic viability from my point of view, and that’s resilience. That’s also something that

comes more and more in mind of sustainability managers, they’re resilience managers, basically. They have to take a lot more long-term look onto the business model. Where do risks arise for the business model from the transition side, for example, from the politics, if they don’t understand it? And then we have another very important topic that we cover with my team. It’s climate risks. That’s also a topic that’s not well understood in a lot of companies in Germany.

it’s also about res it’s also about resilience long term or being able to deliver our services in the long term. and this also brings economic viability if we’re good here. And then we have a fourth part, which is also my in Germany we say steckenpferd. really much deeper in this topic, it’s bankability. It’s financial markets. How do we present ourselves to the financial markets to reduce

financing costs because we’re well aware that transformation is needed also in our business model. Transformation costs money. And we want to be as good as possible to be able to well get this money for transformation, to be able to transform ourselves. You spoke with my colleagues about carbon capture. It’s a very, very expensive solution. This is why we need to be very good on the financial market side. This is why we are currently working our second green bond, which will also be out soon.

That’s a very important topic which brings economic viability through sustainability work, to be honest.

Patrick Hypscher: Wow, that’s a super wide field. So and second field. Yeah, as I keep saying, with focus on circularity, but it’s also true for sustainability. It’s about how we do business. and therefore it affects all steps of doing business. and just like a cross-reference for the listeners who now might be intrigued. Okay, what’s the business model of EEW? Yeah, as as you

Fabian Böhmer: Managers for everything.

[00:31:22] The sustainability report under new regulation

Patrick Hypscher: Started in your answer to that question a bit with that. So if you’re interested in that, listen to the previous conversation with Sebastian Sievers. it’s the second one in this series, where he gives some more insights into and the overall business model of EEW. and I wanna pick one aspect you mentioned the bankability.

and also we started our conversation with the sustainability report, which of course is a very important instrument for bankability. and I feel like when it comes to regulation and sustainability reports in the last couple of years, every year you need to comply with a new regulation. and now since you’re nearly done with the upcoming report

And it’s the first one under your responsibility. what did change in the recent

Fabian Böhmer: Well I can agree every year there is something new in this world. It’s so fluid, it’s so dynamic. And there we have my second steckenpferd. because I’ve been doing this regulatory sustainability reporting since the beginning, since it started with regulation. I solved all the first times. it started in two thousand seventeen with the so-called NFRD, the non-financial disclosure regulation. So the first kind of sustainability report.

That large companies had to provide, especially with a focus on the financial market side. again. this was very funny because nobody knew this new regulation came up. What should it look like? What does the report look like in the end? So it was crazy times and it didn’t stop. On the contrary, it picked up a lot of pace with the Green Deal coming up with all the ideas that the European Union came up and in

In general, the overall idea is how can we make our transformation that we need in the European economy? How can we make it financeable? How can we get how can we transfer funds into transformative aspects, into more sustainable business models in the future? And they did quite a lot of good thinking, and then quite a lot of well failures to be honest.

I’m not a big fan of everything that came up. The ideas are very good. Ideas are very important, for example, with the EU taxonomy, which is kind of a classification system to really define what’s sustainable, what’s not sustainable. That’s the core questions that we always have to solve. And if we had a classification system that would work, great. But in the end, taxonomy became a monster, to be honest, which is not really manageable and really doesn’t deliver the impact it should deliver.

Then came the CSRD came up. that’s the big reporting regulation that we all have to face now. EEW now in the second wave, and started from 2027. And I did the first taxonomy report for the company I was before, a large reinsurance company in 2021. And then I was the project manager for the first CSRD report in the new wave on a 2024. So again, the first times nobody knew what it should look like in the end. And

Then yes, we delivered some good reports, some good numbers from my point of view. And now I can take over at EEW and I have the same problems ahead of me, taxonomy, CSRD, and so on and so on. And to be honest, there was a good basis at EEW. I said it earlier, they already report for some years to sustainability using the GRI standards.

And now comes the CSRD, the big regulation. and this enforces the so-called ESRS on us, the European sustainability reporting standard. So a new reporting standard. And this was the first task I did when I started transform the report into an ESRS report. So it will look pretty much different. We did a new materiality assessment in line with the process that the ESRS want to have, and then we draw a completely new report out of it.

Some basic information they state, of course, but it looks quite a lot different. And we put up some new elements, especially regarding bankability. mentioned it’s the taxonomy, for example, the classification system. This also becomes mandatory from 2027. And I wanted to have a first voluntary report to this to taxonomy because I believe it’s still an important part in the communication with investors, with Greenbond investors.

We see a green bond standard that came up from the European Union that really hooks onto the taxonomy. So it’s normal now to use the taxonomy into your transformation acts aspect communication against the capital markets. So this is why we had to include this topic. And then the topic I mentioned earlier is also part of the sustainability report for the first time. It’s climate risk. I come from a reinsurance company, so climate risk is something that

very well aware of and which is very important for me. This is why we conducted a very deep climate risk analysis using latest state-of-the-art techniques and so on. And we integrated first time information about climate risks in the report, which is also very important for the financial markets. It’s basically the most important message that you can send as a company. I’m well aware of my climate risks. I manage them well so I’m a long-term viable again. So this is why

Also is a new part of the sustainability report. And in the end, I wanted to the report to be more closely aligned to our core business. I said it earlier, we have quite a lot of positive aspects on the environment. And we don’t always need to think about transformation and about carbon capture, which is an important topic for the future, of course. But we also need to talk about what’s the actual benefit of what we do at the moment.

And this is what I wanted to enhance in the report. Not only talk about what we want to do, but we what we actually do and what’s good for the environment. I mentioned it earlier, sanitation of pollutants and so on, microplastics not getting into the ocean because we can burn it, and so on and so on. and this is why the report looks now a little bit different. Still has a lot of the elements included, but it’s developed

further in line with the requirements that we have to fulfil in the next one and a half years already.

[00:38:16] Communicating with all stakeholders

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. Wow, this sounds like a quite some work. And I see your ambition to not only meet the regulatory standards and even some voluntary aspects of it, while at the same time serving the company. and through that, of course, supporting the sustainable mission in all three dimensions. So how can you then use the something like the week?

report with all the effort that is to most outsiders not so I mean the effort is visible but the benefits of the report are not so visible. So how how do you try to reframe the value of the sustainability report and use it as an instrument to make the company more successful?

Fabian Böhmer: that’s another thing that I need to bring together as a as head of sustainability for EEW. I said the bankability is one thing. They that’s a stakeholder side that’s very important. they want to have certain kind of information. And then we have other stakeholders that as have the same importance for us. For example, politics, for example, the communities that live around our plants, they always say, that’s a waste incineration plant. That can’t be good for us. We

We might get cancer or something. So whatever you get up there. And this is what we bring need to bring the stakeholder information into one report to make it understandable for quite a lot of different kind of stakeholders that are equally important for us in the end. So it’s not about delivering the banking information, also delivering the messages and making them understandable. For example, through delivering well, emission numbers to make sh to say we fulfill all the emission requirements.

it’s very safe near our plant. so you won’t get cancer just because you live near one of our plants. and that’s a little bit difficult to bring all those information and long report together that it’s understandable. in the end, I believe that the report also creates value for the company because we want to make it more of a decision tool, because we make the numbers ready for with timelines we see.

developments. we can or we deliver a long more long term view on impacts and risks and opportunities than for example the classical risk management can and we make it well viable and touchable in the report with numbers so that’s also an important task for my team deliver group numbers on sustainability deliver kpis that are important for decision making for the future strict strategic decision making

And for the overall company strategy. And that’s an understanding that’s well gets more and more established at EEW also that in the end the sustainability report brings together all kinds of dimensions. They not only bring the mission numbers together, we also have quite a lot of information about our own workforce, for example. What’s the characteristics, what’s our how many women work at EEW, for example.

And then there’s a funny fact. we have it with a lot of applicants. They come to to do some interviews and they say, Well, I wanted to get to know something about the company and I found a sustainability report and it’s a hundred pages about information, what you actually do. what what’s actually the benefit of your business model and how does how does your employees actually feel? what’s the the accident rate, for example.

So in the end, it’s the most comprehensive information tool about a company that exists. It’s even more than in the in a management report, for example, much more as as on a website, for example. So when you want to be informed about a company, sustainability report is the first or the best source that you can take up. Of course, you always need to take a look. It’s a little bit, of course, PR included. That’s that’s that always the case sustainability communication.

but we of course want to be transparent on everything. We want to be on the basis of data. And that’s very important for us that we don’t greenwash here. So whatever is in the report, it’s very much substantiated. It’s in the future it will also be audited. The sustainability was already or some parts of it were all of it in the last year. This year we didn’t do it because we changed quite a lot. So we w we might wait a year for the audit.

And then in 2027, it must be audited by the financial auditor. it’s part of the management report. So everything that’s inside there is true. It’s not greenwashing or something. And this is why it’s so important that the sustainability report brings all this information together for all kinds of stakeholders. So you can rely on those informations in the end. And if a company writes, we have a positive impact on that on the environment.

Then it’s a substantiated message. So this brings long term profitability for the company from my point of view. Not only on the bankable side, but also on a reputational side.

[00:43:38] The financial value of a good report

Patrick Hypscher: So when I listen to you, I see the need for focus, which you mentioned at the very beginning, is luckily one of your let’s say strengths because it’s pretty easy to get lost in all these different dimensions and topics. Because actually look at the whole company. I’ve one nearly final question to bring back focus, so to say. And this is like

the economic benefit of a good report. So w what’s what’s in it for a company when you have a strong of course environmental performance that also will be represented by the report.

Fabian Böhmer: Well it comes back of course w what what’s the first thing that’s tangible is always the financial costs. that’s what I meant with better bankability, back better information for investors. And that’s maybe a message I would send out to a lot of sustainability managers, also for smaller companies. This topic is still growing excessively, the green finance side. And this will grow over in the next decade.

With new funds coming up from the European Union that will be connected to sustainability. and then we have some rules from the EBA, for example, the European Banking Authority coming up that makes it mandatory for banks to include ESG factors into credit risks, for example. So every company that needs a credit for something, whatever it is, is measured against ESG and it influences your risk score. And the dimension that’s

Different from bank to bank, of course, but it’s a message that’s still not in everyone’s head. when you deliver a sustainability report, good sustainability report, the right messages. It improves your financial rating, it improves your bankability, improves your credits or whatever you want to use. It’s not about that you have to use green financial products as we do. We use green bonds, for example, which is a

financial program which also grow, which is a very attractive option for transformation still. We have transformation credits coming up from the banks and everything is connected to ESG. So the first tangible thing that every management needs to understand it’s value on the financial side that you create with a sustainability report. And again, keep it focused. Don’t do too big, don’t create too much resources or don’t put too much resources into the report. Bring the most important

things, bring the most important figures that are important for your business model. that’s what every bank wants to have. and this is where it becomes tangible. other benefits of course, as mentioned earlier, like reputation, that’s more of a long term thing, that’s more of a license to operate thing. That’s not so easy to put into numbers. but it’s I still I think it’s still measurable because how you speak about a company, how you speak about a business model

This can also be measured that it changes, that the view changes on the business model. And it’s not only the sustainability report, of course, but it’s part of it. It’s part of the story that you want to make your business model more tangible, more understandable, and showing off the benefits. This is why why it’s important for me to really focus on what’s the positive impact as well, not only the negative impact. And then I want to focus on risks as well.

And there is a big question always about the double materiality approach. you might have heard already this discussion. there’s a long fight going on between European Union and all the unders other standard setters. It’s important to have the double materiality or the single materiality, while the single materiality focuses mostly on financial aspects, double materiality takes both into account. and in the end, for me, it’s the same. It’s basically the same.

This discussion is nonsense from our point of view, because every negative impact is also a financial risk, also a financial indicator. What is important on the double material side is to bring up the positive impacts much more. This is where we can create worth again by bringing up the positive impacts that we have to report anyway.

So yes, yes it’s quite a difficult topic to explain, but it’s a very big topic. we can talk hours about this, I think. but it’s from the dearest heart that a good sustainability report with a great focus is something that creates value for every company.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. And what I really grasp is your desire to help the company and of course the community, society. When you do the report, you are dependent upon support of many colleagues. And if you want to create the impact you just described, you’re also dependent upon colleagues and stakeholders and to enable them to support

support them. So you’re embedded of course, you’re part of the company, you’re part of the

Fabian Böhmer: To all kind of parts of the company.

[00:48:54] Hacks for bringing colleagues onboard

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And to be successful as a head of sustainability and everything you described, you need to collaborate with stakeholders. And sometimes it feels like that might not be easy, especially because to colleagues it’s n the benefits are not so obvious in the very beginning. you have quite some experience in a couple of companies. Can you share like

One or two habits or hacks for bringing colleagues on

Fabian Böhmer: Really depends on the colleague, of course. Yeah. Okay, cool. It’s a little bit lucky for me.

Patrick Hypscher: Context context and so the situation in the overness first of all.

Fabian Böhmer: It’s lucky for me that this topic already has been established in EEW. So it’s not not we have to now make a first report. It’s in the minds that this is important for us. It’s in the minds that our green bond is connected to our ESG performance as well. So it’s a financial topic. This makes it a little bit easier. But as a well, as a habit, I would say start not with sustainability vocabulary when you talk with internal stakeholders about what you want, about what you achieve.

start with the other person’s real problems that they have. For example, operations talk about efficiency, talk about resilience. Climate risk is a topic that well, everyone has in mind. Of course, hail storm can come up and this makes it difficult for us, but nobody looks in the future. I can deliver information based on scenario analysis, which is scientifically proven that you can well look into the right directions when you bring those kind of topics up.

You really have the people behind you and say, that’s great. We didn’t know that we can use those projections for the future and that we have those risks experts delivering real information for us, real worthful information for us. So we can solve a problem here. and this makes it easy to bring operation behind you. Say, hey, that this guy delivered good information for us. He helps us in our everyday work. and this is not only because he has to, because he wants to

make the company more resilient in the end. the same thing with the f with the finance side, of course, with our financial department. again, I’m lucky that they it already have a green bond. It’s well established at as well in our CFO’s mind that sustainability is important part for financial ability. and also on our colleagues side.

But I really dug into the topic with them. I explained what I want to do, what I want to achieve, what I want to make better and why. So bringing those real problem information into the departments really make your position more accepted directly from the beginning. I was a guy coming from the financial sector before, who never worked in the waste industry before and

Suddenly I say, let’s do it like this, or let’s include this. Of course, there are some restrictions to that, but I think it solved this problem by delivering real problem solving for some departments already. And this makes it easier to bring through your sustainability again now, of course, to be respected. And this is also the case for the board, of course. When you bring real useful this decision useful information into the board meetings.

They really accept you, they believe your view. And when you say it’s not only about being ecologically sustainable, also bec about being profitable, then it’s much more worth, of course, the information than only saying we want to do this because it’s good for the environment. So bring together those things and your messages will be heard.

[00:52:48] Closing

Patrick Hypscher: Wow. What a ride. Thanks for showing us the complexities of this role. But also I will add the link to your sustainability report in the show notes so people can also.

Fabian Böhmer: For the beauty.

Green financing framework also comes out with the sustainability report that explains how we how we understand how we use funds for sustainable transformation in the end. So this is also a very important document that we’re

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. Fabian, thanks for sharing your experience. Thank you.

Fabian Böhmer: very much Patrick.

Patrick Hypscher: You just listened to the fifth episode of the series Incineration in the Circular Economy. If you want to get the key learnings from this conversation or an outlook of upcoming circularity events around the world, sign up to our newsletter. You can find it at www.circularity.fm. In the last episode of this series, Florian Fehr, Managing Director of NEEW Ventures, and I will be at IFAT. Together we will interview startup founders and talk about

The important relationship between startups and corporates like EEW. Until then, let’s make sure we drive a profitable circular economy. And please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.