Production & Safety
Status of Goals from 2017/2018
No incidents with relevant environmental inputs
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: annual
Implementation status: We achieved this goal in 2019 and 2020. Incidents involving substance releases did not result in any environmental input that could be described as a hazard. Leaked materials were securely contained and properly disposed of. We also analyze incidents with no relevant impact, using these findings to develop additional improvement measures.
Improve specific environmental performance by 15 percent, with 2020 as the base year.
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2030
Lower our average specific energy consumption (amount of energy per net production volume) by 50 percent, with 2007 as the base year.
Corporate entity: WACKER Germany
Deadline: 2022
Corporate entity: WACKER Germany
Deadline: 2030
Reduce specific energy consumption by an annual 1.5 percent.
Corporate entity: Divisions
Deadline: annual (operational target)
Reduce specific CO2 emissions by a third, with 2012 as the base year.
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2030
Reduce specific CO2 emissions by 15 percent per metric ton of net production – while maintaining a comparable product portfolio – from 2012 onward.
Corporate entity: WACKER Germany
Deadline: 2022; goal was achieved in 2018
Reduce specific dust emissions (per metric ton produced) by 50 percent, with 2012 as the base year.
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2022
Reduce specific emissions of relevant volatile organic compounds (VOCs per metric ton produced) by 25 percent, with 2012 as the base year.
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2022
Reduce specific NOx emissions by 25 percent, with 2012 as the base year.
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2022
With regard to plant safety, no WACKER Process Safety Incident Rate (WPSIR) severity score 1 or 2 (2020: 1.3).
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: Recurring annual goal
Outlook
Air
We will continue to work on reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. In one example from our Nünchritz site, we connected more plants to its new steam network, which will allow us to increase our heat recovery ratio from over 70 percent during the reporting period to up to 83 percent over the next few years. This will increase the amount of CO2 we save by as much as 45,000 metric tons relative to 2016.
Water
WACKER will pursue a continuous improvement process that will optimize water management at its production sites even further, ensuring that we are using our water resources responsibly. Our focus here will be on the following:
- Optimizing the efficiency of our water consumption
- Making all of our process chains more energy efficient in order to reduce the heat loads that need to be dissipated
- Identifying problematic wastewater and reducing substance loads by modifying our processes and/or taking appropriate pretreatment measures
- Identifying potentially critical environmental conditions in our waterways (water flow, temperature, etc.) and preparing the necessary adjustments
Circular Economy
We promote a circular economy, which means taking inspiration from the natural ecosystem, i.e. considering every material to be recyclable and feeding everything back into the material loop. We have launched an ideas campaign as a way of engaging employees in this process, but the results had not yet been evaluated at the time of publication.