Industrial Chemicals

Sustainable Manufacturing

At Croda, we understand the importance of sustainable manufacturing practices. We are constantly looking for ways to minimize the negative impacts on the environment while conserving energy and natural resources. Our objective is to make sustainability a point of difference for our business, and we are confident that this strategy will generate even greater benefits for the environment in which we operate, the people that we work with and the communities we are part of.

Eco-design approach

Eco-design is integrated into our product development throughout our businesses. This approach ensures that we minimise the environmental and social impacts of our products by considering raw materials and its associated supply chains, processes, solvents and manufactured products.

At Croda, we have chosen to assess our process impacts by evaluating them through industry recognised independent frameworks like the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and applying the principles of ISO 26000. These tangible calculations of impacts allow us a continuous improvement of our CSR practices.

Wind

Our manufacturing site in Hull, UK has managed to reduce its carbon emissions by around 55 % since 2000 partly due to the installation of a 2 MW wind turbine. Since the turbine was installed, the site’s imported electricity demand has also reduced and the turbine now supplies around 40 % of the site’s electricity requirements. At full output, the wind turbine will exceed the site’s requirements and electricity is exported to the national grid.

Since 2000, energy and water consumption at Croda’s manufacturing facility in Hull has reduced by around 50% per unit of production.

Landfill Gas

Finding ways to reduce our carbon footprint is central to our sustainability plan and at our Atlas Point manufacturing facility, we have found alternative energy sources to power our plant using solar panels and the conversion of landfill gas to heat and power.

The landfill gas provides enough power to run 55 percent of plant operations, or about the equivalent of powering 3,500 homes.

Solar

Both our Edison, NJ and New Castle, DE locations utilise solar panels to help reduce our reliance on the local energy grids, helping to reduce our fossil fuel consumption.

In Atlas Point, we have a solar field, located on a 2.5 acre open area on the property, as a ground mounted system approximately 775 kW in size.

In Edison, the roof top solar panels provide more than 50% of the power required to run the facility, which is roughly equivalent to powering 42 average-sized homes, removing 47 equivalent cars from service or saving over 27,500 gal of gasoline each year.

Reducing Land Impact

At the end of 2016 we were on schedule to achieve a 10% reduction in Group waste to landfill by the end of 2020, having achieved a 2.5% reduction compared to our 2015 baseline year. Since 2010 we have seen a 57.8% reduction with up to eight of our sites sending zero waste to landfill per annum. Two of our manufacturing sites have made a notable contribution to this achievement: Gouda, in the Netherlands and Mill Hall in North America, both have reduced annual landfill waste flows in recent years, particularly in 2016, from thousands to tens of tonnes.

Packaging Reduction/Recycling

Our new area of focus is on the recyclability of product packaging. We did a survey and discovered that of the materials we are currently using, above 90% are fully recyclable. We are now taking steps to investigate options to replace the items that are not fully recyclable. One such action is our Bag in a Box program: As an alternative to using drums, which are costly and difficult to dispose of, we started shipping pastillated products in a sealed bag inside a cardboard box. The bag and cardboard box are made of recyclable materials, providing an environmentally advantageous option and reducing operational costs.