BASF

Focus on a Member - March 2010

Eckhard Koch, Director of BASF's Sustainability Center, discusses the company's commitment and projects over sustainability issues, as well as its corporate responsibility in some specific fields.

BASF is involved in the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Pilot Project Germany. What does this entail and what will it mean for BASF from a business perspective?

BASF was and is involved in several projects dealing with PCF in order to participate in the methodological discussion and contribute to developing a standard procedure for assessing PCF. In 2008 we worked with nine other companies from different sectors in the Product Carbon Footprint Pilot Project Germany on PCF guidelines. The results of this cooperation were published in January 2009.

BASF advocates environmental assessments that draw up a complete ecological picture with comprehensive criteria over the whole life cycle of a product. In addition, these should take into consideration economic and, if possible, also social criteria for assessing sustainability. The Carbon Footprint is only one part of this complete life cycle assessment.

The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. In what concrete ways does BASF contribute to preserving and improving biodiversity in the world?

We implement projects to encourage the protection of biodiversity at the local level.

For example, we support environmental awareness and education programs like the Voluntary Initiative at Rawcliffe Bridge in the United Kingdom. Since 2003, the program has involved the farming community and the government using research, training, communication, and stewardship to assure safe use of crop protection products, to optimize crop yield, promote biodiversity, and protect water quality on a commercial farm.

Another example is the "Espaco Eco" foundation near our Sao Bernardo do Campo site in Brazil. Espaco Eco is a project in cooperation with the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), which focuses on promoting Sustainable Development in the society by transferring knowledge and technology, especially through the implementation of solutions in eco-efficiency, environmental education and reforestation.

As a part of the European Alliance for CSR, BASF is playing a leading role in the Demographic Change Laboratory, which aims at developing strategies and solutions to meet the challenges presented by demographic change. What has the Laboratory achieved and what are the next steps?

The subject of demographic change is one of the hot topics on the sustainability agenda, as it affects politics, business, and society. BASF strives to contribute improvements to the current discussion and the application of methods to assess demographic risk for business and society.

In September 2009, CSR Europe's members, BASF SE, Evonik Industries AG and SAP AG, together with econsense and the Rostock Center for the study of Demographic Change, launched the Demographic Risk Atlas.

The Demographic Risk Atlas deals with population ageing and shrinking in the regions and countries of the European Union. It offers a comparative overview of demographic change in the European Union between 1990 and 2030, pointing to the similarities it presents in some respects and the high diversity it shows in others, particularly on the regional level.

The concept of the Atlas relies on profound scientific research. Additionally, it addresses the need for more labour market based information emerging in a variety of stakeholder dialogue in different European locations.

The idea is to continue this dialogue throughout the European Union to develop collaborative concepts together with business, politics, trade unions, and NGOs tackling the challenge of demographic change together. The network of companies seeks to develop strategies for sustainable personnel policies in Europe and foster paradigm changes within corporations while making a proactive contribution towards strengthening competitiveness and the EU Commission's CSR initiatives.

President Obama has proclaimed that scientists should be regarded as role models, just as athletes and entertainers are today. As a leading chemical company, what responsibility does BASF have to encourage interest in science, and how does the company live up to those responsibilities?

BASF, as part of an industry that relies heavily on science, has the responsibility to encourage interest in science. It is important to foster this interest, in particular in the youth, to ensure that scientific discovery, leading to improvements for society, is furthered in the future.

BASF supports many activities in order to strengthen the image of science, such as our ‘Kids Lab', ‘Knowlede Factory', ‘Science Express' and our leading involvement in ‘Jugend Forscht', the regional youth science competition. Further, in Germany, BASF also hosts a continuing education program for teachers, consisting of 2-day courses on current topics such as ‘the future of energy', ‘bio-technology' and ‘large-scale operations and catalysis'.

The best way to inspire children about science is by conducting scientific experiments in the classroom. In 15 countries, children can discover the world of chemistry in our Kids' Labs and through a variety of hands-on experiments. Our focus is on projects where we can incorporate our core competencies and experience. We offer Kids' Labs at our sites in 15 countries. A total of 52,171 children and young people participated in 2009.

In Germany, BASF is a founding member of the Knowledge Factory, and together with around 70 other companies, supports education projects, young entrepreneurs and people starting new businesses. Since it was founded in 2005, the Knowledge Factory has entered into more than 1,600 educational partnerships with schools, reaching around 120,000 children.

BASF received an award for best German sustainability report 2008, partly due to its excellence in structured treatment of the topics product safety, climate protection and responsibility in the supply chain. How will BASF work to improve its sustainability reporting further?

Reporting on sustainability topics is an ongoing development. As society changes, stakeholder expectations also change - and thereby the expectations with regards to sustainability reporting and transparency.

With our report, we stand up to meet these expectations. We have just published our third integrated report covering economic, ecological and social aspects. Our integrated reporting concept reflects our global strategy: sustainability is not an add-on; it is integrated into our core business activities. Throughout the report, we illustrate the value of sustainability for BASF and for society. This is well received by our stakeholders, as it shows two sides of how companies benefit from sustainability: it reduces risks and creates value.

We strive for the further integration of financial, ecological and social aspects in the publication. At the same time, we face a challenge typical for integrated reports: conciseness and size. Based on the feedback from our stakeholders, we decide on the most important material issues topics to be included in the report directly. Additional topics are covered in other media, for example on our website. This will be of even more importance in the future.

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