Group Environmental Objectives 2006-2010
Umicore has established five Group environmental objectives for the period 2006-2010. They constitute, together with the Group social objectives Umicore’s Sustainable Development approach.
While these objectives build upon the performance achieved during the previous years, they further promote continual improvement in the company’s environmental performance. They complement the actions undertaken by many sites as part of their environmental management.
The objectives offer flexibility for all sites to contribute at their own pace to the overall targets set for 2010.
Objectives 1, 2 and 3 apply to all 59 industrial sites whereas objective 4 on energy efficiency also includes the two main office buildings (Brussels and Bagnolet). Objective 5 on product safety is reported at business unit level.
A first status report was given in the 2006 Report to Shareholders and Society. While some initial progress was noted, it was clear that additional efforts were needed to further advance the implementation of the objectives at all sites in order to reach the self-imposed deadline of 2010. To that end, six regional workshops with the plant managers and the site environmental managers were organized to share best practices and to discuss how the Group objectives could be translated into concrete actions at site level.
This section indicates the progress achieved in 2007 for the five environmental objectives.
The information obtained on the status of the objectives was collected using the Group’s environmental data management system. It also included specific questions in order to clarify the actions related to the objectives. The external verifier (Environmental Resources Management Certification and Verification Services Limited - ERM CVS) evaluated the reported progress against the objectives as part of its environmental data verification.
In September 2007, Umicore’s zinc alloys business with activities in Belgium (Balen, and Overpelt) and France (Auby and Le Vigéant) was transferred to Nyrstar. Therefore, the 2006 data were recalculated to take these organizational changes into account.
Furthermore, three additional sites that were acquired during 2006 were added to the scope of the Group environmental objectives.
In the graphs, the status is reported as a percentage of the total number of sites indicating respectively whether the objectives have been met, actions are ongoing or have yet to start:
- objective met: all the requirements related to the objective are met
- actions ongoing: actions have been launched related to one of the targets
- actions yet to start: no actions have been undertaken on any of the elements related to the objective