At Lonza, we strive to minimize the environmental impact of our operations and business practices. We maintain safe workplaces for our employees and provide appropriate education, information and training.
Our 2030 targets
It has been our commitment and strategy throughout the last decade to reduce our energy, water and waste intensity, as well as our rate of accidents and incidents.
We have reviewed our strategy and policy for the upcoming years, and updated our environmental goals to specifically reflect the longer-term greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction requirement from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement sets out a global climate action plan to limit global warming to well below 2°C and is pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
With our energy and GHG targets, we aim to reduce our CO2-eq emissions intensity to below 50% in 2030 (baseline year 2010). For waste we aim for a 2% efficiency gain per annum. For water consumption we aim to introduce local targets and projects in water-intensive or water-restricted sites.
Vision Zero remains unchanged as our aspiration to ensure the safety of our people and our factories and to operate far below the permitted emission limits. The programs around Vision Zero will be developed site by site and reflect the type and impact of the operations within multi-year roadmaps.
The environmental values, baseline and targets will be reassessed in due course to reflect the divestment of the Specialty Ingredients segment.
We want our sites to constantly make progress in environmental and health protection and safety at work and to set
higher ambitions than merely complying with legal standards. Sustainability and corporate social responsibility continue to be high on our agenda.
We strive to develop safe and innovative technologies in response to our customers’ demands and the increasing global regulatory requirements.
We believe in industry responsibility
We not only operate sites worldwide, but also take responsibility for our impact on and relations with the local communities where we live and work.
We are determined to make the best use of raw materials and energy in all processes and to develop and maintain a carefully managed system for handling by-products and wastes.
Improvement programs guide our manufacturing units in our efforts to conduct industrial operations in a
sustainable manner. We combine environmental management systems, national programs,
safety and industrial hygiene programs, and internal audits with managerial
tools to make progress along the path of continual improvement.
Lonza Group signed the Responsible Care Global Charter in 2009 and in March 2015 signed the ICCA RC Global Charter.
Best Practices
- Several of our sites have installed photovoltaic panels onsite, including Singapore (SG), Haryana (IN) and Greenwood (USA).
- Our site in Haryana (IN) is located in a water scarce region and the local team continuously implements initiatives to optimize its water consumption. In 2020, the site invested in a reverse osmosis water plant to recycle reject water from the utilities and to use this recycled water in the cooling tower. This investment will reduce groundwater extraction by 30,000 liters per day and reduce the volume of wastewater going to treatment, with a return on investment expected to take three years.
- At our site in Porriño (ES) the consideration on renewable electricity began back in 2012, following a monographic session about sustainability, involving colleagues from Utilities and EHS. The site approached the power supply company to prioritize renewables sourcing over the established fossil fuel option. Progressively, the percentage of renewables in the site’s purchased power increased, finally achieving 100% by 2017 through a combination of wind and hydropower.
- In 2020 our site in Jakarta (ID) was recognized by the Indonesian government for its successful occupational health and management system (OHS). The Indonesian OHS system (SMK3) has been implemented on our site at an advanced level, and in 2020 received the Gold Flag Award for its high achievement level. The site was also awarded the government’s Zero Accident Award, by the Indonesian government. This award is presented to large companies that succeed in implementing the Occupational Safety and Health program to achieve zero accidents in three consecutive years.
- Our Lonza site in Portsmouth (USA) has invested in making the site a bike-friendly workplace for our employees. The goal is to promote and discuss the environmental and health benefits of alternative commuting, while optimizing the parking offer at the site. Site employees were surveyed to gage the effectiveness of the program, and the site reached out to local stores to meet the growth in demand for bikes. The League of American Bicyclists recognized the site with its Bronze Award.
- Most production sites require heating and cooling in specific processes, and often this energy may be harnessed for use in other processes. The Copenhagen (DK) site has recently installed equipment that uses waste energy from agarose production which would otherwise be “wasted”. The site installed a heat exchanger to cool down agarose solution and pre-heat water. The water passing through the heat exchanger is heated from 10 °C to 40 °C and can therefore be used subsequently as hot water, avoiding the use of additional natural gas.
- The local regulator indicated that the Slough (UK) site uses a proportionately large quantity of water. The site saw this as an opportunity to identify the main areas of water usage and discharge and find ways to reduce them. One project was the installation of additional equipment to reclaim a proportion of the usable Reverse Osmosis (RO) reject water and re-inject it into the front end of the raw water treatment system. The reclaimed water is used to dilute the borehole mains water at the front end of the raw water treatment system. This means that the water treatment needs less filtering, less energy, less softeners and less reagents. A further advantage is that there is also less engineering hours spent changing inline water filters for maintenance. From the direct water savings, the payback is around six years.
- Coupling waste treatment with energy generation is an important step towards reducing resource consumption and carbon emissions. The Colmar (FR) site decided to invest in this and adapted their processes to use the steam generated from the city’s incinerator. The payback period will take three to five years, depending on the amount of “green” steam produced, and gas prices.
- In our production network, organic solvents play a vital role fueling a broad spectrum of physical and chemical manufacturing processes. By recycling solvents, we reduce the environmental footprint significantly and reduce waste and related costs. Whenever we can, we cycle the recovered solvents back into production processes. Additional uses, such as extractions for wastewater purification, steam generation or external sale all help to generate value and reduce waste. At the Visp (CH) site, we currently recycle and reuse 20,000 tonnes of organic solvents annually, representing 40% of the total amount used. Besides avoiding the consumption of virgin materials, recycling also avoids additional transportation costs and impacts. All other solvents are used as fuel to generate steam and electricity, generating around 1,150 TJ per year. This amount of energy represents a saving of over 30 million m3 of natural gas.
- To prevent accidents with pedestrians and other vehicles, the Bornem (BE) site installed Blue Spot Technology on forklift trucks and electric pallet trucks. The LED light attached to the driver’s protective roof frame projects a blue warning spot onto the ground. This simple visual solution draws attention to moving forklift trucks and significantly increases safety, both in aisles and at crossings where visibility is poor.