No matter how many preventive measures are taken, accidents and environmentally relevant incidents can never be completely ruled out. At WACKER, we make sure we learn from such events to prevent their recurrence.

We use the criteria of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) to assess safety and environmentally relevant incidents (see diagram). These include substance spills, fires and explosions, as well as incidents that have no adverse impact on people or the environment, e.g. if all of a spilled substance was contained by the catch basin or the sewer system and was eliminated by in-plant wastewater treatment facilities.

In 2014, we recorded 22 CEFIC-rated safety and environmentally relevant incidents throughout the Group (2013: 25). Since 2014, we have expressed this number of incidents as a ratio of 1 million hours worked. This performance indicator, which we call the WACKER Process Safety Incident Rate or WPSIR, is tracked across the Group so that we can improve our safety management record. In 2014, the WPSIR was 0.8 incidents per million hours worked.