Corporate Responsibility

Goodyear has a longstanding commitment to corporate responsibility. We anticipate and respond to market trends, customer needs, supplier capabilities and investor interests and are focusing on expanding our corporate responsibility transparency in response to stakeholder requests.

Goodyear Better Future, our corporate responsibility framework, was launched in 2018 to enhance the existing governance of our high-priority topics. The framework helps ensure corporate responsibility is integrated into all levels of our organization, promotes communication and awareness and drives alignment with our corporate strategy and stakeholder priorities.

Goodyear’s Board Committee on Corporate Responsibility and Compliance oversees our corporate responsibility objectives and regularly monitors our progress toward achieving them. Specific functional leaders implement our strategies, goals and purposes, reporting on progress in their areas to Goodyear’s Board of Directors or Board Committee.

The Better Future Steering Committee is responsible for ensuring functional goals are established for Goodyear’s high-priority sustainability topics and aligned with corporate strategy and they advance our communications to external stakeholders. Our VP and Chief Sustainability Officer reports to the SVP Global Operations and Chief Technology Officer, leads the Steering Committee, and provides an annual update to the Board Committee, enhancing their collective knowledge and awareness of key sustainability issues.

The Better Future Working Group is made up of the program managers of each of our high-priority topics. Each Working Group member maintains a sustainability scorecard to help ensure we are effectively managing our high-priority topics. Program managers share scorecard updates for their topic twice a year with the broader Working Group to enhance awareness and cross-functional collaboration. Members are responsible for understanding the current state of their topic, developing and aligning appropriate goals and targets and ensuring KPIs/metrics and strategies are in place for each goal. Performance is measured at least annually, and updates are shared internally and externally, as appropriate.

The Better Future Associate Council is a cross-functional group of associates who identify and implement location-specific initiatives aligned to our high-priority topics. The Council launched at our Corporate Headquarters in Akron, Ohio, and meetings resumed in 2021. We hope to expand the Council to other global locations in the coming years.

Collectively, this governance structure is helping grow internal awareness and engagement for our Better Future framework, including through quarterly town halls for associates, while enhancing our communication to key stakeholders.

BETTER FUTURE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

Stakeholder Engagement & Significant Corporate Responsibility Topics

Goodyear gathers stakeholder feedback through the year, building on information gathered during sustainability materiality assessments. We regularly talk with investors, customers, associates, distributors, suppliers, regulators and more, collecting sustainability-related requests, questions and feedback. This information is gathered and compiled by global functional business leaders and the global sustainability team to help inform strategies that are formulated and implemented at the functional level. Goodyear’s VP and Chief Sustainability Officer provides this stakeholder feedback to the Board Committee to inform their oversight.

To ensure we are managing our most significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts, risks and opportunities, we continue to engage internal and external stakeholders who are knowledgeable in and value corporate responsibility. This summary highlights our key stakeholder groups and the type and frequency of interaction:

Better Future

Goodyear's Strategy Roadmap, defines how we win, how we work and where we focus, and after a 2021 refresh, features an even stronger emphasis on sustainability. Better Future, our corporate responsibility framework, supports and is integrated in the Strategy Roadmap and summarizes our high-priority topics from our most recent sustainability materiality assessment. The pillars of the framework are illustrated below and are followed by a description of our work related to climate, human rights and nature—important focus areas that are woven throughout the framework. The pillars of the framework are illustrated below.

Throughout this report, we explain why these topics matter, what we are doing to manage each, and our progress and performance on commitments. Some commitments outlined in the pages that follow were set recently and may not yet have performance data available.

Climate Change

Climate considerations are driving change in the transportation sector. Advanced forms of mobility, such as electric vehicles, ride sharing and fleets, autonomous vehicles, and connected vehicles, have the potential to reduce vehicle emissions and energy use. Companies in the transportation sector are setting ambitious climate goals that require the support of the entire supply chain to achieve.

The move to a low carbon economy creates growth opportunities within the tire industry that Goodyear is well positioned to leverage through its continued innovation. Goodyear has a proven track record of producing tires for electric and autonomous vehicles, developing tires and rubber compounds that contribute to reduced emissions by lowering rolling resistance and reducing tire weight, and providing fleet solution services that promote fuel efficiency.

Climate change poses risks that could adversely impact Goodyear’s operations, including risks related to our plants to continue to develop and supply the types of products, services and technologies demanded by consumers. Such risks could also include an increase in severe weather events that could temporarily disrupt Goodyear’s operations or supply chain or the operations of Goodyear’s customers, and the cost of compliance associated with increased climate-related regulations globally. That’s why we launched our CEO-sponsored climate strategy development in 2021, led by a cross-functional operating committee and supported by external climate expertise. This collaborative approach ensures the Company understands our most significant climate impacts and the key risks and opportunities our business faces.

In December 2021, we announced our climate ambition, which includes our goal to reach net-zero scope 1, 2 and certain direct scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2050, aligned with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and its new Net-Zero Standard. We also announced our commitment to achieve near-term science-based targets by 2030, including reducing scope 1 and 2 emissions by 46% and certain direct scope 3 emissions by 28%, as compared to 2019.

In the next phase of our climate strategy work, Goodyear will conduct a scenario analysis to evaluate the resilience of Goodyear’s business model in the context of different climate scenarios and evaluate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Goodyear will also evaluate additional carbon reduction activities and will deliver a comprehensive roadmap, including an action plan to achieve our climate ambition.

In 2022, Goodyear will expand our climate reporting to align with the recommendations and supplementary guidance from the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Goodyear’s TCFD report was published in March 2022 and will be updated later in 2022 with the results of the extensive climate analysis work described here. Moving forward, we will work to integrate the climate roadmap activities across the business, and we will integrate the ongoing identification and analysis of climate-related risks into risk management and other business processes.

As the graphic below shows, the biggest impact through the tire life cycle is in the product use phase. One way that Goodyear can influence this is by helping to increase consumers’ fuel efficiency via improved rolling resistance products. Additionally, we work to improve our impacts throughout all life cycle phases through various strategies. Click on each strategy to learn more about our approach and commitments.

Goodyear utilizes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate products quantitatively through the entire life of the product—from the sourcing of raw materials all the way to the end of the product’s life. Each LCA is performed using internationally recognized ISO frameworks that help provide a full picture of product impacts as well as opportunities for improvement that can be used in product development. Goodyear has also collaborated with the Tire Industry Project (TIP) to develop Product Category Rules (PCRs) for evaluating impacts from tires.

Human Rights

Goodyear has strong policies and practices relating to human rights. For example, Goodyear’s Human Rights policy is incorporated in our Business Conduct Manual, Zero Tolerance Policy, Natural Rubber Procurement Policy, and the Supplier Code of Conduct. Purchasing associates globally are provided annual training on Human Rights.

Reporting up through the Better Future governance structure, the recently launched Human Rights Steering Committee is updating Goodyear’s human rights strategy. This strategy aligns with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and includes active workstreams in policy and scope, implementation, engagement and education. We are also developing additional education and communications resources for all our leaders and associates to understand and apply human rights standards in their areas of responsibility.

The scope of this strategy includes evaluating potential risks and opportunities to reduce risk in Goodyear’s operations and supply chain, represented by the Better Future Framework pillars of Sustainable Sourcing, Responsible Operations, Advanced Mobility, and Inspiring Culture. We plan to provide an update on the Human Rights Steering Committee's efforts in future reports.

CLIMATE AND NATURAL RESOURCES

As part of our Goodyear Better Future framework, Goodyear is committed to responsible operations, which includes understanding the potential impacts our operations may have on climate and natural resources, such as forests, land and water.

When it comes to climate impacts, as described in the Climate Change section, most of Goodyear’s impact lies within the product use and raw materials phases. We have set science-based climate goals, are creating a climate strategy and are committed to addressing scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions up and down our value chain.

While Goodyear does not own any rubber tree plantations, we have taken actions as a purchaser of natural rubber, as noted in the Sustainable Sourcing section and in our Natural Rubber Procurement Policy. This includes supporting the livelihoods of smallholders while promoting responsible acquisition and management of land that is free from deforestation. Goodyear is an active member of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) where industry and other platform members throughout the value chain are collaborating under the guidance of the GPSNR Policy Framework.

Goodyear is also an active member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD’s) Tire Industry Project (TIP) which has many working groups, including tire and road wear particles (TRWP) and end-of-life tires (ELT).

Goodyear will continue to monitor the latest recommendations to inform our strategies.