Business News
BASF publishes new corporate carbon footprint
Monday 16. November 2009 - BASF is the first company in the world to voluntarily draw up details of its carbon footprint on a regular basis. The results now published for 2008 show that when used by customers, BASF products save three times more greenhouse gas emissions than are released in the manufacture and disposal of all products made by BASF.
The first such carbon footprint details were published in February 2008. BASF uses the lifetime principle to calculate greenhouse gas emissions; in other words it analyses the full lifecycle of the companys products. This involves looking not just at in-house facilities, but also raw materials and inputs and how these are manufactured and transported, and the disposal of chemical products at the end of their lives.
At the same time, the BASF product portfolio was analyzed to see what volume of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved by using the products for climate protection. The product groups selected from the entire company portfolio were those that save at least twice as much greenhouse gas emissions when used and applied by BASF customers as are released in their production and disposal. In 2008, these products made up about ten percent of BASF sales.
Comparing the emissions and savings gives us the BASF carbon footprint for 2008. The result shows that emissions from raw materials, inputs, production and disposal come to roughly 90 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents (28 million of these from in-house production); compared to the 287 million tonnes of CO2 saved by using BASF products, this gives a ratio of 3 to 1.
An independent study by the Institute of Applied Ecology (the Öko-Institut) in Freiburg has confirmed the accuracy of the BASF calculations. The greatest contribution to emission reductions, at just under 250 million tonnes, comes from products for the construction and housing sector. This relates mainly to insulation materials for renovating old buildings, and cement additives. Contributions in other sectors include plastics for making cars lighter, nitrification inhibitors in agriculture and materials for generating energy from the sun and wind.