Reflections from the Impact Café at Firebird Rooftop Bar

World Trade Center Amsterdam fosters connection, growth and collaboration. We welcome new ideas and voices in collaboration with our residents and partners within finance, impact and tech. Impact also means supporting sustainable and social initiatives, and Green Business Club Zuidas is one of the partners we are proud to work with. They bring together businesses from the Zuidas to share knowledge, ideas and drive collective change. Their annual Impact Café found its home in our Firebird Rooftop Bar.

The evening centred on a question that is becoming ever more relevant for organisations across every sector: what happens when you stop treating CSRD as a tick-box exercise and start seeing it as an opportunity to strengthen your organisation?

A building in motion

The Impact Café was opened by Femke Weller, General Manager of WTC Amsterdam, who shared how our World Trade Center is in the midst of a genuine transformation, not only physically through renovation and sustainability upgrades to the building itself, but also in the role we want to play on the Zuidas. WTC Amsterdam is evolving into a place where people meet, businesses connect, and new ideas take shape.

The building has already moved off gas entirely, and we are actively investing in energy efficiency, circularity, and improved indoor climate. As a host community, we believe our responsibility extends beyond our walls, and evenings like this one are a reflection of that.

The shift from reporting obligation to strategic instrument

Katja Porotnikova, Senior Manager at Deloitte, took the audience through the development of CSRD. For many organisations, the first phase felt like an overwhelming reporting burden: lengthy documents, granular detail, and sustainability information siloed away from the rest of the business. Recent simplifications may appear to ease the pressure, but investors, clients, consumers, and supply chain partners will continue to ask hard questions about sustainability, impact, and risk. That is precisely why she sees an opportunity to make reporting more meaningful. “The simplification of CSRD creates space to focus more on what is truly material for your organisation,” she said. “When sustainability data is used for strategic and operational decision-making, reporting is no longer a separate project, it becomes part of how you run your organisation.”

Heijmans: Sustainability as a business strategy

Robert Koolen, Director of Sustainable Development at Koninklijke Heijmans NV, brought that ambition to life with his business success case. Heijmans has been producing sustainability reports since 2008 and fully integrated sustainability into its core business strategy in 2018. “We no longer have a separate sustainability strategy. Our business strategy is our sustainability strategy,” Koolen explained.

According to Koolen, CSRD has helped Heijmans sharpen its policies, procedures, metrics, and accountabilities. It has also created a common language, both internally and externally, and has fundamentally changed supplier relationships. Conversations are no longer limited to price and quality; they now encompass environmental performance, innovation, data quality, and human rights.

Heijmans has set a target to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 relative to 2019 levels, with a net zero ambition by 2040. Koolen shared examples of construction sites equipped with solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and electric heavy machinery. He also introduced BioBuddy: a system developed by Heijmans that uses cameras, microphones, and AI to monitor biodiversity at project sites.

CSRD is not a finish line, but a tool for making sustainability more tangible and more strategic. Deloitte offered the framework, less box-ticking, more substance. Heijmans demonstrated how reporting, done well, can strengthen strategy, improve data quality, and drive genuine impact. This is where networks such as Green Business Club play a vital role, bringing businesses together and sharing their knowledge. As a host, WTC Amsterdam is proud to provide the space where these conversations can happen. We look forward to hosting many more conversations like this one.

Photography: Ritchie Damwijk