Compared to problems such as climate protection and secured energy supply, the issue of resource efficiency has faded from public eye awareness, although it continues to be of major significance and is becoming increasingly urgent. Numerous raw materials are only available in limited quantities and are not renewable.

The scarcity of resources has become evident to everyone in the form of resource costs that have increased heavily in many areas. While the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 slowed this trend down to some extent, the economic recovery has again caused resource prices to soar.

In view of the rising standard of living in high-growth countries such as China, India, or Brazil, and the consistently high consumption of resources in western industrialized nations, price increases and resource shortages will drastically accelerate in the years to come. In accordance with a calculation by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy, we would need almost three-and-a-half earths if the entire world population were to adopt the lifestyle of Europeans in the future. That means that the per-capita consumption of resources has to drop significantly if we want to leave more than just an exploited world to future generations.

ALTANA is committed to the conservation of natural resources. Overall, only five percent of raw materials used at ALTANA are not associated with final products and we have lowered our specific energy consumption by approximately 14 percent since 2007.