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2018 Annual Report

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2018 Annual Report

Continental Corporation - 2018 Annual Report
 

Environment

1 2 3 4 5

For Continental and its markets, the business relevance of environmental protection – for example, in the form of society’s expectations, customers’ standards and regulatory requirements – is increasing continuously.

Management approach
Environmental protection at Continental is based on the global policy for environment, safety, security, health and fire protection (ESH policy) which, among other things, stipulates that we want to use our processes and products to make a material contribution to sustainable environmental protection – especially climate protection – over the entire product life cycle. Overall responsibility for environmental management is borne by the Corporate Quality and Environment department, which reports directly to the chairman of the Executive Board and develops strategic targets for environmental protection in the corporation as a whole. These are broken down by division, and ultimate responsibility for the resulting strategic requirements, objectives and programs at each location lies with the respective ESH managers. We continuously improve our environmental performance through the systematic application of management systems. We have set clear targets for the corporation. By 2020, we want to reduce our specific CO2 emissions, energy and water consumption, and waste generation by 20% in relation to adjusted sales, using 2013 as a basis. We also intend to improve our waste recycling and reuse rate by two percentage points a year. New locations are being integrated into these processes and programs incrementally.

Key environmental data1
    2018 20172
Energy use3 TWh 9.9 9.5
CO2 emissions (Scope 1+2)4 million metric tons CO2 3.3 3.2
Water demand million m3 20.6 19.8
Waste generation metric tons 419,426 379,992
Waste recycled % 78 81
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1 According to the environmental data system, which covers all major production and development locations, not including fleet consumption. Definitions of the data are based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
2 According to previous year’s reporting.
3 Fossil energy sources, electricity and steam.
4 According to Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 (location-based) on the basis of the reported energy use and emission factors included in Defra (2016) and IEA (2017) databases.

Results and performance indicators
In the production units, we are working on making processes more efficient and more sustainable. Because of Continental’s growth in past years, the absolute values for energy use, CO2 emissions, waste generation and water demand have increased continuously. Compared with 2013, there was an improvement in the specific performance indicators of 3% for energy, 2% for CO2 and 5% for water. The specific figures for waste, however, were 13% higher than in 2013. The increases in efficiency and measures for improvement in the plants were balanced out by changes in the portfolio, sales effects, increasing vertical integration, more energy-intensive production technologies, and higher quality requirements.

Key performance indicators1
    2018 Change compared to 20132
Energy use MWh/€ million 223 -3 %
CO2 emissions (Scope 1+2)3 metric tons CO2/€ million 74 -2 %
Water demand m3/€ million 465 -5 %
Waste generation metric tons/€ million 9.5 13 %
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1 In terms of adjusted sales in the respective year, according to environmental data system.
2 On the basis of figures reported for 2013 (only partially assured externally).
3 According to Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 2 (location-based) on the basis of the reported energy use and emission factors included in Defra (2016) and IEA (2017) databases.

At the end of 2018, the more than 200 major production and development locations were certified according to ISO 14001 (environmental management) and more than 90 locations were already certified according to ISO 50001 (energy management). This corresponds to over 80% and roughly half of the total workforce respectively. The focus of environmental management is efficiency and thus the improvement of each specific type of consumption.

You can find more information on aspects relating to environmental protection in the Report on Risks and Opportunities.