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AAK ­ Responsible Growth 2012-2013 - UK

The section on Environment covers AAK’s impact on the environment in terms of consumption and emissions from our production plants. To make this section easier to navigate, it is divided into four sub-sections: Energy, Air, Water and Waste. employees who are directly involved in achieving As a matter of course, we take environmental laws and regulations very seriously and are proud to report that, in 2012, we recorded no incidents of non-compliance. Moreover, no significant spills were registered during the year. AAK Responsible Growth | 21 AAK’s production plants differ in size, capacity and the types of processes used. Processing vegetable oils is both complex and energy intensive. At AAK, we are very much aware of the footprint our production plants leave on the environment. We therefore constantly strive to reduce our consumption of energy and water and to reduce waste and emissions. As part of our AAK Acceleration program, it is our aim to become more environmentally friendly – improving day by day. To achieve this, we implement environmental projects, monitor consumption and emissions, and identify best practices by benchmarking our production plants against each other and against other players in the industry. A handful of our various environmental projects are described in this section, presented by the Environmental objectives Waste There have been some exciting developments in the solid waste handling industry over the past ten years. It has grown dramatically and specialised methods have been developed for the recovery of material value by reuse, the recovery of recyclable materials and the establishment of waste-to-energy facilities – all of which have significantly increased the number of waste disposal options available to us. Through the implementation of sorting systems, we can now dispose of our waste both more responsibly and more cheaply than ever before. In 2012, 97.4 percent of our waste material went for reuse, recycling or recovery. This actually represents a decline of 0.9 percent point compared with 2011 primarily caused by new aquisition of Louisville, Kentucky and change of US federal legislation regarding used bleaching earth. In spite of the drop, we are still confident that we will achieve our target. During the last year, 2.6 percent (equal to 2,000 MT) of our total waste was disposed of in the least favourable way: landfill. Sending waste to landfill means not utilising any of the potential value that may still be present. What’s more, in many countries, a landfill tax has been introduced to reduce the amount of waste disposed of in this way. Our objective is that, by the end of 2015, minimum 98.5 percent of our waste will go to reuse, recycling or recovery. Least favourable Most favourable Landfill Recover Recycle Reuse Reduce The development that we want our waste disposal to follow: going from waste to landfill, over recovery, recycling and reuse, to reduction. the results. Energy Energy is necessary for our business. We can’t manage without it, but we can continually strive to increase energy efficiency. In fact, reducing energy consumption and consequently reducing impact on the environment is integral to the way we manage our operations. A common way of measuring energy efficiency is to calculate the amount of energy consumed versus the production output. However, AAK’s strategy of producing and selling more specialised, refined products means that we generally require a greater amount of energy per unit of output. This tends to blur the results of our energy efficiency initiatives and makes it hard to paint a clear picture. For this reason, we have decided to focus on local organisation, projects, progress and results driven by local energy efficiency teams. Our process for the coming three years will be as follows: 2013: Teams established, monthly meetings and at least one project initiated 2014: Energy efficiency projects at all sites are delivering according to plan 2015: Energy efficiency results documented at all sites


AAK ­ Responsible Growth 2012-2013 - UK
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