BASF increased its energy efficiency by 20 percent compared with baseline 2002 and reduced its greenhouse gas emissions per metric ton of sales product by 34 percent. The number of work-related accidents dropped in the same period by 58 percent.
BASF has set itself long term global goals in environment, health and safety for the year 2020: The number of work-related accidents is to decline by 80 percent compared to 2002. BASF achieved minus 58 percent in 2013. “This is an excellent result. However: We need to continue to follow our policy, ‘We never compromise on safety’. This is how we can achieve our goal and cut the current number of accidents in half again,” said Dr. Ulrich von Deessen, president of BASF’s Environment, Health and Safety Competence Center and Climate Protection Officer. Therefore, the company is promoting the further trainings of the employees. For the second time, the global safety days are taking place in March 2014 including more than 500 presentations, tutorials and workshops worldwide.
BASF also plans to improve its health management in order to promote the health and productivity of the employees. In 2013, approximately 48,000 global health checks were conducted.
BASF aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent per metric ton of sales product compared with baseline 2002 and to increase energy efficiency (excluding Oil & Gas) by 35 percent. The company raised its energy efficiency by 20 percent compared to the baseline 2002 (2012: 22 percent ) and lowered the specific greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent (2012: 33 percent ). “To supply our production sites with energy, we rely on combined heat and power plants with gas and steam turbines and we use the heat released by production processes. Our chemical plants operate at above-average efficiency. Altogether we are heading in the right direction with climate protection. Since we have already achieved a high level, additional large improvements are difficult to realize,” von Deessen explained.
In 2013, the total emissions of air pollutants were reduced to 32,385 metric tons (2012: 30,581 metric tons) compared to 2002. This corresponds to a decline of 62 percent .
BASF decreased also the emissions to water of organic substances, heavy metals and nitrogen: organic substances sank by 79 percent (2012: 77 percent ), nitrogen by 87 percent (2012: 87 percent ) and heavy metals by 64 percent (2012: 57percent ) compared to 2002. The European Water Stewardship (EWS), a voluntary industrial standard set by the European Water Partnership, has been introduced at nearly all European sites of BASF in water stress areas.
