Sustainability at Realty Income

MATERIALITY

We refreshed our 2020 materiality assessment to identify and prioritize topics to shape our sustainability strategy and reporting. This update will be published in our Business Impact and Sustainability Report. 

This process aligned with mandatory and voluntary sustainability standards and regulations, and considered topics covered by leading frameworks and questionnaires, industry organizations such as Nareit, SASB Standards, as well as input received from internal company teams. Once topics were identified and prioritized, we utilized a third party sustainability consulting firm to finalize our topics amongst our Board of Directors, executive officers, and department heads.

EVALUATING MATERIAL TOPICS ACROSS THREE DIMENSIONS:

1. The significance of current and potential social, environmental, and economic impacts. This analysis considered both quantitative and qualitative factors based on double materiality principles. Resources included the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, SASB Standards, the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) assessment, applicable laws and regulations, sector initiatives and research, and investor guidance, along with company strategy, policies, core competencies, and identified risks and opportunities along the value chain.

2. The importance to stockholders, as well as other key internal and external stakeholders, in determining their assessments and decisions about Realty Income. This evaluation of different stakeholder perspectives incorporated feedback from interviews of cross-functional team members, senior leaders, and external advisors, input from our ongoing stockholder interactions, feedback from key clients, investor-focused topics of interest, and peer sustainability reports.

3. The strategy in creating long-term value. We assessed strategic significance based on Realty Income’s purpose, mission, vision, values, and areas of organizational focus along with a mapping exercise to identify key sources of long-term value creation. This systems-thinking approach enabled us to take a more holistic view of the network of topics and their important interconnections.

Our material topics are listed below.

ENVIRONMENT	SOCIAL		GOVERNANCE
Taking environmental action	Strengthening communities	Investing in people	Upholding operational excellence
Direct environmental impacts Water (portfolio) Materials and waste (portfolio) Emissions and air quality (portfolio) Biodiversity Client sustainability impacts Energy use (portfolio)	Community support Client health and safety Economic performance Indirect economic impacts Local hiring	Culture, Inclusion & Belonging Hiring and retention Training and development Employee engagement Employee health, safety, and well-being	Governance Ethical and responsible business conduct Risk management Climate change adaptation/strategy Supply chain management Data privacy and security Investment diligence Regulatory compliance
UNIVERSAL TOPICS
Economic performance Stakeholder engagement