About this report

As ICL’s reporting practices mature, it is also strengthening its data collecting and reporting practices, becoming more efficient in these throughout its operations. In all cases, data relates to the 2020 calendar year, unless otherwise stated. For most quantitative indicators, data from previous years is presented as a baseline for comparison. ICL’s previous report was for 2019 and was published in mid-2020. 

The report covers all of ICL’s global operations, which is about 98% of ICL’s business. The quantitative information in this report relates to all ICL Divisions and Business Units. 

Unless stated otherwise, all quantitative data is based on an operational control approach in terms of reporting boundaries. The report includes (among other things) information about a significant joint venture (YPH). The joint venture with a Chinese company, YPH, was finalized at the end of 2015. Data regarding the YPH JV has been included since 2016, including in this report. This was a significant change and has resulted in changes in trends in several environmental KPIs. A list of ICL’s main entities included in this report can be found in the Organizational Structure diagram – as in ICL’s 2020 Annual Report (see Note 24 – Group Entities). 

As ICL has established updated goals regarding GHG and other environmental indicators, a new baseline was created, during the year 2018. This is also an opportunity to include a more relevant scope of entities that are included in GHG and other calculations. Beginning in 2019, ICL is operating a new and highly-efficient Sdom CHP plant that supplies most of the electricity for ICL’s sites in Israel, replacing externally purchased electricity by ICL Israel. This has had an effect on some of the environmental indicators. At ICL Boulby, changes in production and shifting mining from Potash to solely Polyhalite, has reduced the flow to the North Sea. This has had an effect on other environmental indicators as well. 

Information was collected internally by the Company’s headquarters, relevant departments with expertise related to the environment, human resources, safety, ethics, governance, community engagement and more. Environmental and social data were collected from dozens of ICL’s sites located worldwide. A major part of the EHS quantitative data was collected using the ICL sustainability IT reporting system. ICL continues its attempts to further deepen its reporting transparency and expand its scope of data regarding the environment, safety, diversity in the workplace, supply chain and other categories.

This report was written in accordance with GRI Standards ‘in accordance’ option Core, and reports are in line with the principles for defining report content and quality. Additionally, the report addresses GRI’s Mining and Metals Sector Guidance supplement. However, not all of the guidelines are applicable or appropriate to ICL’s business, and they have been applied selectively to relate to the Company’s mineral extraction activities.

This year, ICL has also incorporated relevant SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standard) and TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Disclosures) indicators into the report. This is an initial step and it is expected that by next year all SASB disclosures of ICL’s business units will be reported. Additional disclosures for the TCFD will be reported in ICL’s 2022 Annual Report.

ICL selected the content for this report by prioritizing its material impact on sustainability, following a process of evaluation by both internal and external stakeholders. ICL personnel, including ICL senior executives, were interviewed for the purpose of gathering and verifying data processes for this report. The highlights in the report and its structure are based on the diverse composition of ICL’s stakeholders. ICL includes its primary impact on a corporate level, as well as through greater levels of detail, so that the report is relevant for as many stakeholders as possible. All aspects addressed in this report are material within the organization. Where the issue has been identified as relevant within the organization, it applies across all entities of ICL’s business.

In order to maintain consistency with the Company’s various international reporting standards, all information collected from ICL’s sites around the world, including Israeli sites, are presented in this report using international protocols (e.g. CDP, GRI) which ICL has used successfully for over 10 years. The information reported is a result of direct analysis of the issues under discussion and calculations when required (unless otherwise noted). 

Corrections have been made in some previously reported environmental and safety KPIs. All corrections compared to the previous report (2019) did not cause a significant change in the reported figures or the overall year-by-year trends. When made, these corrections were caused by the corrections of identified reporting errors from specific sites in some KPIs (for instance- cases where some site-specific internally reporting personnel misunderstood reporting definitions of some waste or water stream in previous years).