AGC Glass Europe

The divisions and plant managements are committed to the Group’s environmental policy.

At group or divisional level, specific programmes are defined to act as guidelines for the country organisations and plants.

At group level, key performance indicators (KPIs) have been selected (to be achieved at group level in 2012 referred to 2006). A general report is published each month to inform each plant of group improvements. The objectives are:

• Energy: reduce specific energy consumption by 10%
• Water: reduce specific water consumption by 15%
• Waste: zero waste to landfill

The results obtained are presented in chapter 3: “Environmental Achievements.”

At the Raw Glass Division level a programme has been defined and a taskforce has been assigned to meet the requirements of the IPPC directive and to raise energy efficiency in production.

Within the Group Environmental Department, supportive action programmes can be drawn up for group level, divisional and local activities that help to improve the environmental performance.

At plant level the efforts are determined by the Group’s environmental policy, environmental aspects and impacts in the plants as well as local legal requirements and policy.

All divisions and corporate services will successfully work on achieving the Group objectives by:

• Improving the energy efficiency of their manufacturing processes or activities
• Reducing the environmental impact of their manufacturing processes or activities
• Certification of the environmental management systems
• Enhanced “Green Purchasing” and environmental audits of suppliers
• Constructing a centralised database of chemical products
• Making greater use of multimodal transportation
• Increasing environmental awareness at each level in the organisation.

The R&D and Engineering activities will focus on:

• Innovation in the manufacturing processes, in the aspects of energy, emissions and production efficiency
• Developing and renewing products that save energy and contribute to sustainable development, such as coatings and photovoltaic products or applications
• Research, trials and projects aimed at extending the possibilities for recycling of our products at the end of their life
• Replacing hazardous substances in our processes and products, beyond what is required by regulation.

The purchasing activities will focus on:

• Identifying, reducing and replacing the hazardous substances in the purchased materials that end up in products
• Further developing the Green Purchasing activities
• Achieving compliance with the REACh regulation on chemical substances.

Flat glass production still faces a big challenge to find an optimum solution for reducing atmospheric emissions and specific energy consumption in the manufacturing process. The Industrial Emissions Directive (2010/75/EU), the Emissions Trading Directive (2009/29/EC) and the National Emission Ceilings Directive (2001/81/EC) required big efforts and this will continue in the coming years. Since the issue of climate change has certainly gained in importance this will require even greater efforts to reduce energy consumption.

Automotive production will mainly focus on making improvements in sun reflecting coatings and reducing the weight of glass. This will enable the automotive producers to meet the CO₂ limit of 120 grams of CO2 per kilometre on average (obligatory in the EU as of 2012).

Certified Environmental Management Systems in the plants are considered essential in order to improve our performance and achieve the goals of our environmental policy. A certified EMS certainly helps to have a properly functioning PDCA cycle that leads to full compliance, raised awareness and lower environmental impact.

A growing number of plants have now achieved ISO 14001 certification. All factories in the Raw Glass division obtained ISO 14001 certification in 2009, as did the main factories in the Processed Glass division. Brussels AGC Glass Europe Headquarters also obtained certification in May 2009. To improve efficiency, the next objective will be to integrate the environmental, quality and safety certifications.