Environment To achieve this, environmental projects are implemented, consumption and emissions are monitored, and best practices are identified by benchmarking production plants against each other and against other players in the industry. A handful of AAK’s various environmental projects are described in this section, presented by the employees who are directly involved in achieving the results. As a matter of course, we take environmental laws and regulations very seriously and are proud to report that, in 2014, we recorded no incidents of non-compliance. Environmental objectives Resource efficiency Waste 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. 31 The section on Environment covers AAK’s impact on the environment in terms of consumption and emissions from our production plants. It is a clear top priority for us to minimize our use of natural resources and emissions per processed final product even though our stronger focus on speciality drives a higher degree of processing. We have been able to create strong results within this area over the last years and also during this year due to a strong focus on internal and external benchmarking as well as best practise sharing. To make this section easier to navigate, it has been divided into four sub-sections: Energy, Air, Water and Waste. AAK’s production plants differ in size, capacity and the types of processes used. Processing vegetable oils is both complex and energy-intensive. AAK is very much aware of the footprint that production plants leave on the environment. Therefore, the company constantly strives to reduce its consumption of energy and water, and to reduce waste and emissions. As part of the AAKtion program, the aim is to become more environmentally friendly – and improve day by day. A common way of measuring resource efficiency is to calculate the amount of resources consumed versus the production output. However, AAK’s strategy of producing and selling more specialized, refined products means that, all things being equal, we require more resources per unit of output. This sometimes blurs the results of efficiency initiatives and makes it hard to paint a clear picture and give well-earned credit to the projects. For this reason, a decision has been taken to focus on local organization, projects, progress and results driven by local resource efficiency teams. The process: 2013: Teams established, monthly meetings and at least one project initiated 2014: Resource efficiency projects at all sites are delivering according to plan 2015: Resource efficiency results documented at all sites During 2014 efficiency projects have progressed according to plans. During 2015 individual improvement results will be documented. Sending waste to landfill means not utilizing 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. AAK’s objective is that, by the end of 2015, minimum 98.5 percent of the company’s waste will go to reuse, recycling or recovery. During 2014, 2.4 percent (equal to 2,600 MT) of the total waste was disposed of in the least favourable way: landfill. The remaining 97.6 percent of the waste material was disposed for reuse, recycling or recovery. This is an improvement of 5,4 percentage points compared to 2013. The main challenges to obtain our 2015 objective are new acquisitions with less focus on waste and a change in US federal legislation regarding used bleaching earth. In spite of these challenges we will do our utmost to achieve the 2015 target.
AAK - Sustainability Report 2014/2015
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