Achieving Excellent Environmental Performance Through Positive Principles

Through the diligent
implementation of our sustainability strategy, we made significant progress in
minimizing our environmental footprint. “We are thrilled to announce that we
surpassed several of our 2020 eco-effectiveness goals this year due to the
concerted efforts of our Green Teams around the world,” said Kip Cleverley,
Vice President, Global Sustainability.
Below is more information on how
we exceeded three of our environmental targets – emissions, water, and waste –
several years early.
Emissions
In 2017, we decreased our greenhouse
gas emissions by 14.7% from the prior year, resulting in an overall reduction
of approximately 33.8% since 2010. We thus surpassed our 2020 market-based
global GHG (Scope 1 and Scope 2) intensity goal – of a 25% reduction from a
2010 baseline.
We achieved this by reducing our
overall energy intensity, procuring more renewable electricity, and relocating
one of our facilities – a Fragrance Ingredients facility in Hangzhou, China –
to a more eco-effective facility. The
new location is equipped with high-efficiency natural gas boilers to generate
the steam needed for production, allowing for a significant reduction in
emissions.
We also furthered our commitment
to renewable electricity in 2017. As part of RE100, a global initiative uniting
over a hundred companies in a shared commitment to procure 100% of electricity
from renewable sources. We are focusing on and making great progress in
obtaining our electricity from renewable sources and driving our Scope 2
emissions to zero. In 2017, approximately 33% of our global electricity
portfolio came from renewable sources, including both wind and solar.[1]
This includes 5.2 MWh generated by our on-site wind turbine at our Tilburg, the
Netherlands facility and 4.1 MWh generated by the solar field in Hazlet.
We were identified as a global
leader for our actions and strategies to address climate change. We earned a
spot on the CDP Climate A List for the third year in a row and were awarded a
position on the Supplier Climate A List. IFF is among the 2% of organizations
participating in CDP’s supply chain program to be awarded a position on the
Supplier Climate A List.
Water
We made strides in reducing our
global water footprint – already exceeding our proposed 2020 goals twice to
date. In 2012, we set a 2020 goal of a 25% reduction in water use intensity
against our 2010 baseline. After achieving that goal in 2014, we increased it
to 50%, which we again surpassed in 2016. In 2017, we again exceeded our target
by attaining a 68.2% reduction from 2010.
Last year, we withdrew
approximately three million cubic meters of water from groundwater and
municipal sources. We achieved an overall year-over-year water use reduction of
approximately 23.3% due to facility relocation and several water-saving
projects recently implemented at the site level. Our local Green Teams drove
these reductions by reviewing their site and current procedures. After
identifying areas of improvement, the teams developed projects such as
eliminating once-through cooling, improving cleaning procedures and finding and
repairing water leaks. We are also evaluating how to further our efforts to recycle
and reuse water in order to minimize the amount of fresh water we consume.
Additionally, the new Fragrance
Ingredients facility in Hangzhou, China was designed to minimize its
environmental impact. By leveraging the latest technologies available, the new
facility will be one of IFF’s most water-efficient manufacturing locations
globally.
As we continue to shrink our
water footprint and identify ways to reduce our consumption, we are currently
developing our water stewardship strategy. As global water demand continues to
grow, water scarcity will be an increasingly important issue. We are therefore working
towards a water management strategy to address these concerns and will prioritize watershed
management and engagement with local communities.
Waste
Eliminating the concept of waste
is one of the core principles of the circular economy and one of IFF’s Positive
Principles in our sustainability strategy.
Our success in reducing waste
stems from the completion of several initiatives targeting high-waste
generation parts of the production process. These projects address waste during
the washing phases of production, so every efficiency improvement will also result
in water savings. Our Operations and R&D teams have also made other
improvements through process and product innovations. For example, our
Benicarló, Spain, facility installed advanced water treatment technology to
generate pure distilled water from a waste stream and decrease the amount of
hazardous waste produced in the process. This technology is expected to reduce
hazardous waste generation from this plant by 3,000 metric tons per year.
Due to these efforts and others, we
decreased our hazardous waste generation by 29.3% in 2017, from 0.079 to 0.056
metric tons of hazardous waste per metric ton of production. Overall, we have
reduced hazardous waste generation by 42.1% against the 2010 baseline,
exceeding our 2020 goal.
We continually strive to gain a
deeper understanding of the impact that acquisitions and our product mix can
have on our global hazardous waste generation. Our ever-changing product
portfolio makes it difficult to address specific waste streams, complicating
our waste reduction strategy. This affected our overall waste generation trend
in recent years; however, by continuing to monitor trends that affect our waste,
and tracking and reporting our progress, we achieved our goal in 2017.
Zero Waste to Landfill
We are also making progress on
waste reduction through Zero Waste to Landfill (ZWL) efforts. A ZWL goal
encourages employees to implement innovative solutions to reduce waste generation
and reuse and recycle materials where possible.
To understand the feasibility of
achieving Zero Waste to Landfill, we piloted a program with our South
Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S. flavors facility. In 2017, the site was certified ZWL
from the third-party Green Circle Certifications. This certification is not
only an IFF first, but an industry first. The South Brunswick facility diverts
waste through the use of the 4R’s – reducing, reusing, recycling, and
recovering energy through a waste-to-energy facility. The certification process
includes an onsite audit (to inspect outgoing waste and recycling streams) and
a downstream audit (to track IFF’s recycled or reused materials after leaving
our facilities). So far, the South Brunswick facility has averted 540 metric
tons of waste that included office supplies, unrecyclable packaging materials
and contaminated containers which frequently ended up in the landfill.
Said Brad Hartzell, Director of
Manufacturing, Flavors, North America, “We are proud of South Brunswick's
certification,” said Brad Hartzell, Director of Manufacturing, Flavors –- North
America. “It is a great example of how IFF is increasing efficiency, cutting
costs, and having a positive impact on society and the environment through
sustainability." Our South Brunswick facility is now working with other
locations to share their learnings and expand our program.
As we continue to expand and
define our waste disposal metrics and methods, we will develop goals to support
the circular economy and eliminate the concept of waste in our operations.
1- The Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) generated from the Hazlet, New
Jersey, U.S. solar array are retained by the array’s owner and IFF is supplied
with equivalent Green-e certified Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), along with
the electricity generated by the solar array. Qualifying RECs are also
purchased for our facilities in Benicarló, Spain; Tilburg, the Netherlands;
Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.; the Ottens flavors facility in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.; and our creative center in Hilversum, Netherlands.