Specific USGQ objectives to 2014, base year 2004
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Degussa has long had defined Group objectives on safety and the environment in place. In the autumn of 2005 the Management Board laid down the first quantitative environmental targets. We intend to cut our specific greenhouse gas emissions by 20% between 2004 and 2014. The only exception is unavoidable CO2 emissions from production operations (CO2 as a coupled product). |
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By 2005 we had already achieved a reduction of 4.8% over 2004 (calculated in relation to the production volume). We were also able to cut our water consumption dramatically, reducing it by 4.9% in 2005 over the volume recorded in 2004 (calculated in relation to the production volume). Our long-term target for 2004 to 2014 is to reduce the specific water consumption by 20%.
We managed to trim the amount of production waste by 1% from 2004 to 2005 (calculated in relation to the production volume). This figure reflects a lower reduction than what we had expected. However, we still expect to be able to fulfill our long-term target of a 20% reduction by 2014 (calculated in relation to the production volume), in view of the fact that 2005 was burdened by extraordinary effects such as the consolidation of an American subsidiary for the first time, as well as changes in the product mix.
Accidents at the workplace are a very important issue for us, and consequently a quantitative target has been set here at the Group level, since the creation of the new Degussa. Our short-term target of cutting the accident level to 3.6 accidents per million working hours has since been joined by a long-term target of reducing the figure to 1.5 accidents per million working hours by 2014. In fact, we managed to bring the number of accidents down to 2.9 per million working hours in 2005.
USGQ objectives to 2014, base year 2004
- Occupational safety: Reduce accident frequency to 1.5 accidents per 1 million working hours
- Greenhouse gases: Reduce specific emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent (excluding process-related CO2 emissions)
- Water consumption: Reduce specific water consumption by 20 percent
- Production waste: Reduce specific volume of production waste by 20 percent