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What does sustainability mean to BASF?
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How is BASF engaged with the topic sustainability?
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How is BASF implementing sustainability in its everyday activities?
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How does sustainability minimize our risk?
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How does Corporate Social Responsibilty contribute to our success?
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Does BASF publish a sustainability report?
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How is the public recognition for BASF's sustainability activities?
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Has BASF been awarded for sustainability currently?
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Is BASF listed in sustainability indexes?
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What does sustainability mean to BASF?
For BASF, sustainable development means integrating environmental protection and social responsibility in our business processes so that they contribute to our longterm economic success. BASF's Sustainability Council develops and monitors the necessary strategies, which are implemented with the support of regional networks. We systematically identify sustainability issues that are relevant to BASF and evaluate them in terms of their opportunities and risks. Our sustainability strategy has the goal of avoiding risks, promoting our existing businesses and creating new business opportunities. This is why we are placing more emphasis on integrating sustainability into our customer relations from 2007 onward.> Read more on page 68 onward.
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How is BASF engaged with the topic sustainability?
BASF is a founding member of the Global Compact initiative. BASF is committed to promoting and implementing the Compact's 10 principles concerning the safeguarding of human rights, labor and environmental standards and anti-corruption. Within this membership BASF carries out partnership projects with public sector organizations and NGOs.
More information you can find here.
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How is BASF implementing sustainability in its everyday activities?
Our activities in the fields of environmental protection, safety and health are managed by a global expert network – our Responsible Care® competence center. This work and our environmental and safety goals are aligned with the principles of Responsible Care, a voluntary global initiative of the chemical industry to which BASF has been committed since 1992.
The global cooperation between our Responsible Care experts combines two important success factors: it allows freedom for regional diversity and makes it possible to implement global standards. At the regional level our experts ensure that appropriate account is taken of specific local needs. At the same time, our experts work together on long-term global standards. We have already developed such standards with regard to both the planning and construction of new plants and the transportation and storage of chemicals (see also www.basf.de/competence-center-rc).
Standardized audits ensure transparency
We perform regular audits at all our sites. They are an important tool in our efforts to make our sites and plants even safer, and they allow us to learn from one another. Experts for safety, the environment and occupational medicine regularly monitor all our sites and plants on behalf of the Board of Executive Directors. Using clearly defined criteria they track how our standards are implemented locally. Environmental and safety audits and occupational medicine and health protection audits are conducted separately. The results are then combined to give a comprehensive profile for every site. Possible measures range from immediate improvements through to longterm projects that are subject to follow-up audits. During the 2004 reporting period, 88 environmental and safety audits were carried out at 56 BASF sites. We also conducted 38 occupational medicine and health protection audits at 38 sites.
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How does sustainability minimize our risk?
We want to promote and maintain healthy working conditions. To do so, we conduct systematic reviews worldwide to examine whether our facilities meet environmental, labor and social standards, and we train our employees on a regular basis. We also attach great importance to ensuring that employees from other companies at our sites operate just as safely as we do. As such, our global safety, health and environment management standards apply equally to them. We supply them with information and provide advice on promoting safety, health and environmental protection. For instance, we trained more than 100,000 employees of service providers and suppliers solely in connection with the multiple tasks involved in constructing and starting up our Nanjing site. This is one example how CSR helps to minimize risk for BASF.
Audits are an important tool in reviewing our standards. Experts for safety, environment and occupational medicine conduct regular inspections of all our sites and facilities, using precisely defined criteria to examine how our standards are being implemented. Separate audits are performed in each case for safety, environment, occupational medicine and health protection. The results are used to generate a comprehensive profile for each site. Any necessary corrective action is identified on the basis of this profile. These actions cover the whole spectrum from acute improvements to long-term projects. The implementation of these measures is reviewed by follow-up revisions. In 2005, 83 environment and safety revisions took place at 48 BASF Group sites. Additionally occupational medicine and health protection audits were performed at 31 sites.
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How does Corporate Social Responsibilty contribute to our success?
Sustainable development is a basic requirement for long-term success. This principle applies to us and to our customers. They too must maintain a balance between economy, ecology and social concerns. We support them and deploy our extensive knowledge in the areas of Responsible Care® and sustainable development in line with our strategy to help our customers to be more successful. We provide sustainability tools for this purpose, such as our BASF Success.
Success - Added Value trough Sustainability
We use our know-how, which is unique in the chemical industry, in the fields of energy, product stewardship, health, safety and environment, to help our customers to be more successful. Our expertise concerning sustainability is bundled by "Success - Added Value through Sustainability" in tailor-made packages.
Find more information here.
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Does BASF publish a sustainability report?
Once a year BASF publishes the Corporate Report. This report explains how BASF integrates Sustainabilty in the business activities.
The current report is structured by stakeholders.
For further details please refer to our Corporate Report 2006.
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How is the public recognition for BASF's sustainability activities?
In 2007, BASF shares were included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI-World) for the seventh year in succession and are thus once again listed in the currently most important sustainability index. The companies included in the DJSI-World are selected out of all 2,500 members of the Dow Jones Global Index: on the basis of sustainability criteria only the top 10% in each industry group are selected. In 2007, BASF was awarded top grades for the categories investor relations, responsible lobbying, climate strategy, sustainability reporting and standards for suppliers.
BASF Aktiengesellschaft has been honored as Best in Class in its approach to addressing the challenges of climate change by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and has again been included in the Climate Leadership Index. The CDP is an initiative involving 255 institutional investors, who represent $31 trillion in assets under management. The CDP supports the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by companies and annually selects 60 of the world's 500 top companies on how they deal with the opportunities and risks of climate change.
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Has BASF been awarded for sustainability currently?
Please refer to the overview of selected sustainability prizes awarded to BASF.
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Is BASF listed in sustainability indexes?
Please refer to the following page to get an overview of the indices in which BASF is included.
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