Environmental Performance Assessment

WACKER has a system in place to assess its sites’ environmental performance. This system is used to convert a site’s total emissions and consumption of resources and energy into environmental units, which also include the use of water and amount of waste generated.

The environmental performance assessment incorporates both absolute quantities and weighting factors, which take account of four criteria:

Environmental impact
Safety of treatment/disposal
Requirements imposed by environmental legislation and corporate policy
Public acceptance

Energy consumption – electricity and heat consumption included in the environmental units – is very important to WACKER due to public awareness of the significance of greenhouse gases and international climate-protection agreements. Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases are largely energy-related at WACKER.

The number of environmental units increased by 8.1 percent in the current reporting period due to increased production volumes. In terms of gross production, the specific environmental units remained virtually unchanged from the previous reporting period.

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Environmental Units for Chemical Production Sites

	2018	2017	2016

Environmental units	144,511	136,792	133,740
Gross production volume in 1,000 metric tons	17,813	16,966	16,483
Environmental units per 1,000 metric tons of gross production	8.1	8.1	8.1

Carbon Dioxide

Chemical name: CO₂. This gas naturally constitutes 0.04% of air. Carbon dioxide is generated during the combustion of coal, natural gas and other organic substances. As a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, it contributes to global warming. Since the start of industrialization in 1850, its concentration in air has risen from approx. 300 to 390 ppm (parts per million). This value is increasing by around 2 ppm every year. Other greenhouse gases are represented as CO₂ equivalents (CO₂e) based on their greenhouse effect.