Coloplast takes steps to reduce its climate emissions

9 Mar 2009

A new policy on climate gas reduction is the first step towards Coloplast lowering its climate gas emissions.

The policy, which was approved by Coloplast's Executive Management in February 2009, gives the go-ahead for the reduction of emissions to begin in earnest.
"We've been measuring our energy use every quarter for over ten years now," says Lone Stubberup, Director for Environmental, Health and Safety Development in Coloplast, "but knowing more about the impact of greenhouse gases combined with current global financial problems means we should be doing more to reduce emissions for the good of the environment as well as saving money."

"Our target is to continuously reduce our emissions of climate gases"Lene Skole, Executive VP and CFO of Coloplast. Download the policy (pdf)

 

Improving reporting

The new policy will allow existing environmental reporting to be improved, which until now has mostly been based upon production waste and the consumption of energy and water. "There are numerous sources of climate gasses besides energy," explains Stubberup. "Business travelling, production of raw material - such as the polymer and cardboard - and the transportation of products are just some of them. We have a lot of data to collect."

The data is needed to determine quite precisely a target to reduce emissions by. The first mapping of CO2 emissions has been completed using the recognised Greenhouse Gas Protocol standard and an improved reporting system will be introduced for handling the continuous data collection. The first set of figures from the reporting system is expected by the end of the year.

 

Saving energy and money

For Coloplast to reach its long-term business targets without reducing its emissions would not be ideal. The challenge is to separate CO2 emissions from economic growth. 

Lone Stubberup says, "We should be able to reach our business targets and reduce our emissions. We have devised a strategy to achieve this, which includes some things we can do quickly like investigating energy efficiency in our existing buildings, ensuring new buildings are built to be energy-efficient, and reducing business travel in favour of video conferencing."
She adds, "We're not required to reduce our emissions by law but as well as the obvious environmental and financial benefits, we feel making reductions is a collective responsibility, hence our response."