ALTANA’s Understanding of Sustainability

Economy, ecology, and social responsibility: ALTANA’s understanding of sustainability is based on this triad. This is also reflected in ALTANA’s mission:

• We provide innovative solutions based on integrated chemical, formulation, and application expertise that make products of daily life better and more sustainable.
• Our solutions open up growth or savings potential for our customers and can change entire markets.
• As a result, we create value for our customers, employees, owner, and society as a whole.

However, we have not only been making our customers’ products more sustainable for decades, but have also reduced our own greenhouse gas emissions. 
For further details on our measures, please visit the "Consistent climate strategy" page.

ALTANA has been a member of the UN Global Compact since 2010, pledging to incorporate its ten principles into the company's operations and uphold the overarching goals of the United Nations. You can access our latest Communication on Progress regarding the Global Compact Principles in the Corporate Report 2023.

In addition, ALTANA supports the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," which was adopted by the 193 member states of the United Nations at the summit on September 25, 2015. This commitment underscores our firm belief that we can only achieve our sustainability goals together. And everyone has to make a contribution. What else is needed? Ambitious yet realistic targets. A good example are the climate protection targets drawn up by 195 countries at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21). After days of talks, the nations agreed on an action plan on December 12. The goal: to limit global warming to well below 2 °C. A lot has happened since then, but more still needs to be done to counteract dangerous climate change. 

In 2017, ALTANA achieved its self-imposed target set in 2007 to reduce CO₂ emissions by 30 percent relative to gross value added by 2020.

Furthermore, the company has successfully reduced greenhouse gas emissions in Scopes 1 and 2 by approximately 70 percent compared to 2014, without resorting to offsetting measures.

Beginning in 2025, ALTANA will offset all CO₂ equivalents generated in Scope 1, Scope 2, and selected categories of Scope 3 (Categories 4, 6, and 8). Our unequivocal objective is to achieve greenhouse gas neutrality across all three scopes.

As a globally manufacturing specialty chemicals company, ALTANA has various stakeholders with whom the Group and the individual divisions are in regular contact and exchange. The content and results of these dialogs are among the factors that shape ALTANA’s understanding of sustainability. ALTANA’s most important stakeholders are its customers, employees, and owner, as well as suppliers and other business partners, authorities, associations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and our neighbors at the various sites.

ALTANA has published the current status of the materiality matrix in its corporate report.

In order to make not only its economic performance but also the company's commitment in all areas of sustainability measurable, ALTANA is increasingly using external assessments in addition to key figures and certified management systems. The EcoVadis evaluation system plays a special role in this regard.

EcoVadis has become the leading assessment platform for the chemical industry. Tens of thousands of companies now work with EcoVadis. For the assessment, the rating company analyzes four topics – environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. The investigations are based on leading standards (GRI, UN Global Compact, and ISO 26000). 

ALTANA uses the objective EcoVadis rating of its production sites and ALTANA AG as a whole to make the respective status quo transparent both internally and externally, as well as to systematically drive sustainability forward within the company.

The ALTANA Group’s operating companies are responsible for implementing and anchoring sustainability. The individual companies are committed to continually reducing the environmental effects of the Group and to improving safety at the respective sites. In addition, the individual sites are required to introduce suitable management systems and have them certified. Furthermore, special cross-divisional expert platforms are used to exchange information on relevant EH&S topics (for example energy, sustainability performance, and environmental indicators) and to highlight best-practice models.