Group Management Report Products Safety and Health Environment Human Resources Social Commitment Consolidated Financial Statements 87
cooling water. Instead of having to operate all of the pumps
at the same time, as has been the case so far, in the future
it will be possible to control one or more pumps in accordance
with needs. Thus, pumps not needed on weekends or
during the late shift can be switched off. As a result, the annual
electricity consumption of the sealants supplier will
decrease to a total of 550 megawatt-hours (corresponding
to 170 tons of CO²) in 2018. In parallel, around 50,000
less liters of water will be consumed per year.
ECKART also contributes to environmental protection.
An example is its nitrogen consumption. The effect-pigment
specialist uses nitrogen as protective gas and produces
some of it itself at its Wackersdorf site. A compressor was
converted to speed control in the nitrogen production
system, reducing the electricity consumption significantly. As
a result, CO² emissions decreased by almost 100 tons.
At its Grevenbroich site, ACTEGA is investing in the
optimization of its production plants to improve energy effi-
ciency. To this end, the company is reconstructing the bead
mills for pigment grinding as well as the agitators in which
the components for packaging coatings are mixed.
On the basis of a comprehensive energy-efficiency analy-
sis, BYK improved the exhaust air cleaning system at its
site in Gonzales by incorporating thermal afterburning. The
system is used to burn ethanol-containing process gases
that arise when additive powder is dried. In the process, it
makes the hydrocarbons, which are regarded as volatile
organic compounds (VOC), harmless. The additives and in-
struments specialist can now close one of the four exhaust
air cleaning systems and use the resulting waste heat for
steam production. With these measures, BYK can save a
total of 4,800 megawatt-hours of heat (corresponding to
1,027 tons of CO²).
Using Water Resources Even More Sparingly
Water plays an important role in many of the ALTANA Group’s
production processes. In the interest of the environment,
the company makes an effort to use as little water as possi-
ble. In 2017, the specialty chemicals group made further
progress thanks to corresponding investments. An example
is the cooling system at BYK’s Earth City site. The system
was already optimized in the planning and implementation
stages, enabling approximately 20,000 cubic meters / year
of water to be avoided. This is possible because the new cool-
Environmental performance indicators ALTANA
2014 2015 2016 2017
CO² (Scope 1 + Scope 2) (kg / €) 0.30 0.27 0.24 0.21
Drinking water (l / €) 1.85 1.87 1.52 1.36
Hazardous waste (g / €) 25.32 23.57 23.33 21.24
Hazardous waste for disposal (g / €) 5.95 6.92 7.04 4.20
Non-hazardous waste (g / €) 12.59 13.22 10.49 12.89
Non-hazardous waste for disposal (g / €) 6.12 6.36 5.16 5.62
The key performance indicators are calculated from the absolute values related to the gross value added.
Scope1: direct emissions; Scope 2: indirect emissions