Illumina Inc., has officially published the results from its latest annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.
Going by the available details, this particular report treads up a long distance to highlight all the ways in which Illumina is making precision health more accessible than ever before, along with its ongoing efforts to support people and communities, integrate sustainability across its business, operate responsibly, and lead with integrity.
Talk about the whole report on a slightly deeper level, we begin from Illumina’s attempts to make genomics affordable and accessible. You see, while integrating genomics across the care continuum is critical to positive health outcomes, gaps in the current health insurance coverage affairs continue to put genomic testing out of reach for many.
Against that, Illumina’s advocacy drive would go onto support the expansion of health care coverage for genomic testing to 100 million more people, compared to 2023. This ensures, in totality, the coverage of more than 1.4 billion lives.
Next up, the company significantly reduced packaging and increased product sustainability efforts. This translates to how, during the course of 2024, Illumina achieved a staggering 80% reduction in packaging since 2019, surpassing its 2030 target of 75% reduction.
In fact, the MiSeq i100 Series, which was designed with sustainability in mind, also achieved a 35% reduction in climate change impact, leveraging reduced packaging, room-temperature shipping, and storage of its reagents to fulfill that job.
Beyond this, Illumina was able to get 100% of Illumina’s global electricity consumption to be supported by renewable sources for the third consecutive year.
Illumina took this opportunity to further unveil progress across 4 specific pillars on which its CSR report is predicated upon.
The pillar here relates to accelerating access of genomics. For instance, we briefly referred to the introduction of MiSeq i100 Series of benchtop sequencers, but what we haven’t touched upon yet is how these sequencers have been largely successful in achieving faster run times and simplified setup and analysis. Illumina further invested in the future of genomics by expanding access to STEM education, having acquired 2.1 million STEM learners since 2019 through direct programming, nonprofit partners, and employee engagement.
Moving on to the pillar of nurturing people and communities, the company basically reports that well over 52% of its employees participated in giving and volunteering programs. During the given drive, they donated an upwards of 91,370 volunteer hours.
In case that wasn’t enough, Illumina also maintained a zero net pay gap for the sixth consecutive year.
The third pillar in line revolves around integrating sustainability. This area had the company realizing a 45% decrease in scopes 1 and 2 emissions from its 2019 baseline. Five Illumina labs also completed the eight-month certification process with My Green Lab, the gold standard for laboratory sustainability best practices around the world.
Rounding up highlights is Illumina’s goal of operating responsibly. The company achieved that by making sure 100% of Illumina’s core facilities participated in third-party audit programs. The company also cracked the Dow Jones Best-in-Class World Index and the Dow Jones Best-in-Class North America Index (formerly part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices) for the sixth year in a row.
Apart from that, Illumina received a top industry ISS Corporate Governance rating.
“At Illumina, we work relentlessly in our mission to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome, and our CSR strategy is an essential part of that,” said Jacob Thaysen, CEO of Illumina. “Our innovation has driven incredible breakthroughs—but those breakthroughs only matter if they can be accessed. Our CSR efforts are designed to drive greater access to genomics technologies and improve health equity for billions of people around the world. We continue to take meaningful steps to champion patients, communities, employees, and the planet as we work to create a healthier and more sustainable future.”
