Environment, Safety, Health, Quality & Security

• We are committed to the SBTi goal of "well below 2°C" and commit to reducing absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 25 percent from 2021 to 2030. Scope 3 emissions of all upstream categories and the downstream category "Transport and Distribution" are to be reduced by 11 percent over the same period. 
  In this way, Evonik is actively supporting the Paris Climate Agreement.
• With our integrated management system, we continuously check the suitability and functionality of our processes with the aim of continuous improvement. Strengths and potentials with regard to the environment, safety, health, quality and energy are thus identified for our company.
• Through worldwide compliance audits, we assess whether internal guidelines and group standards as well as legal or regulatory regulations and their organizational obligations are complied with in the affected processes.
• Our annual management review informs the Executive Board about the strengths and weaknesses of our operating units.

As the responsible department, we regularly consider the impact of our production activities in terms of the environment. With the help of a centrally provided tool, we collect environmental data worldwide and determine key figures. With the help of these key figures, we evaluate our environmental performance and derive measures.

We analyze and evaluate developments and impacts of regulatory requirements in cooperation with national and international associations.

We face both today's issues and the challenges of a fast-changing society in order to continue to position Evonik well in its competitive environment.

The function ESHQ coordinates and supports all ESHQ-relevant topics for Evonik in the overarching committee work. Examples include activities in the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), CEFIC (European Chemical Industry Council) or Econsense (Forum for Sustainable Development of the German Economy) and VCI (Association of Chemical Industries) at national level.

We always strive for showing the specific characteristics from the point of view of the chemical industry in the case of self-commitments and new regulations and to develop solutions with the parties involved.

We as ESHQ at Evonik define clear safety objectives: For occupational safety, we have a Group target of 0.26 accidents / 200,000 working hours. The Group target of plant safety in is 0.40 events / 200,000 working hours (according to the newly applied methodology Cefic 2016).

Our central guidelines on plant and occupational safety must be followed at all locations worldwide.

Our actions are based on a comprehensive, integrated management system for the environment, safety, health, quality and energy. This applies to the entire Evonik Group and is based on legal frameworks as well as internal guidelines and group standards.

As the responsible department, we regularly consider the impact of our production activities in terms of safety. With the help of a centrally provided tool, we collect safety relevant events worldwide from this. With the help of these key figures, we evaluate our performance in the area of safety, derive measures and set new goals for the Group every year.

We analyze and evaluate developments and impacts of regulatory requirements in cooperation with national and international associations.

We face both today's issues and the challenges of a fast-changing society in order to continue to position Evonik well in its competitive environment.

At Evonik, security takes precedence over sales and profit. Our materiality analysis and regular exchange with our stakeholders confirm the high priority of occupational and plant safety as well as transport safety and logistics. This is also reflected in the Group-relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We have further developed our cultural initiative "Safety at Evonik" into a group-wide management approach for all topics of operational safety and transport safety. It defined binding principles of action that give employees and managers reliable guidance for safety-compliant behavior in everyday life. All Evonik employees worldwide are trained in it.

The Group fulfils its control function in occupational and plant safety in globally valid guidelines and procedures, which are an integral part of our management system. Compliance with these regulations is the subject of central audits. Group bodies ensure that processes critical to success are standardized across segments.

We examine the implementation of the requirements and additional need for action in the context of key figures of Group targets. Control-relevant key figures are the frequency of accidents for occupational safety and the frequency of events for plant safety.

Safe transportation of goods is very important for us. We use a uniform process to select logistics service providers for transportation. We also regularly review their performance. In keeping with our understanding of sustainability, that includes evaluating the Responsible Care® performance of all transportation providers. Our aim is to minimize risk at all stages, from loading through transportation to unloading.

The standards we set for the transportation of dangerous goods are even higher than the national and international regulations. In order to be registered by our logistics procurement unit for transportation, all logistics service providers have to recognize our requirements. These specify that, as well as ensuring safety, the transportation of goods must be ecologically sustainable, and the provider must meet its social responsibility and comply with all statutory provisions. Further, we have defined minimum requirements for customers who collect goods themselves or use their own logistics service providers.

Regular training of employees to raise awareness of hazardous goods and help them meet statutory requirements in the transportation of such goods is essential and forms an integral part of Evonik’s safety culture.

Securing loads correctly is another important aspect. This covers both the operational process of physically securing loads and developing a strategy to harmonize and standardize the procedure for securing loads and the equipment required.

Our experts analyze the transportation risks of products with elevated risk potential to identify and evaluate safety and environmental risks and introduce measures to minimize them.

Sustainability in Transportation & Logistics

The principal ecological impact of the transportation of goods is the use of fossil fuels. We therefore keep a close eye on protecting the climate and the environment in the transportation of goods. In collaboration with Procurement, our operational logistics staff regularly examine ways of reducing the number of road shipments by optimizing capacity and using multimodal shipment by rail, inland waterway or ocean freight. This also reduces the impact on communities around our sites, for example, as a result of noise, exhaust fumes and vibrations. Another example of the measures to enhance sustainability is aligning the size of ships used to transport gaseous chemicals to demand. For more information, please visit our Procurement webpages:

Protecting and promoting employees’ health is very important to Evonik. Against the background of demographic change we strive to maintain or even enhance the performance and the well-being of our workforce. Our approach is holistic and integrated.

Health protection is therefore also an important component of our demographic concept and our corporate initiative well@work. With our all-round concept we aim to avoid specific occupational illnesses and work-related health impairments as well as to promote personal health and wellbeing.

All occupational health protection and health promotion measures at Evonik are based on our global health program. This covers the three dimensions: medical emergency management, workplace health protection/occupational health, and workplace health promotion with their main drivers and objectives. It also sets out the framework and quality requirements for health promotions programs.

The mandatory basic requirements for the implementation of the global health program are determined in our Group Functional Policy „Occupational Health Management“. Decisions on the exact implementation are made on site level and take into account local circumstances and needs.

Fulfillment of the requirements is checked regularly by ESHQ-audits, and through an extensive occupational health reporting system. Selected parameters, which we consider especially significant for occupational health management are part of our Occupational Health Performance Index, established in 2012. With this overriding indicator we measure to what extend we fulfill our internal occupational health requirements. The indicator is also supporting the continuous improvement of our performance on this action field.

Basic requirements for medical emergency management are binding for all sites. The necessary equipment and personnel is dependent on production specific risks at the site and availability and quality of the medical infrastructure (ambulance services, hospitals) close to the site.

Where meaningful or necessary, we have our own medical personnel on sites. Where this is not the case, we ensure medical emergency management by our trained first aiders and a close collaboration with the local ambulance services and surrounding hospitals. The procedures for medical emergencies are exercised on a regular basis.

Within preventive occupational medical care employees receive feedback and advice from the occupational physician concerning their individual work-related health risk. As needed work-related preventive medical checkups are conducted. Here the aim is primarily the early detection of work-related health impairments und the prevention of occupational diseases.

We observe and report continuously the development of newly identified occupational diseases. Our KPI is the Occupational Disease Rate (ODR = defined as the number of newly identified cases of occupational diseases per 1 million working hours).The calculation includes all cases recognized in the reporting period, including long latency diseases (i.e., those where the causes lie many years or even decades in the past). 

In 2024, 38 new occupational diseases were approved globally (= ODR 0.59).

These programs impart knowledge about constitutional behavior and through low-threshold offers allow to use the acquired knowledge at work. Some examples are: opportunities for practicing sport or physical activity near the workplace, healthy food choices in the canteens or the offer of flu vaccinations on site.

These long-term programs are complemented by health campaigns on annually changing topics and by general health screenings for early detection of treatable risk factors and diseases.

Our actions are based on a comprehensive, integrated management system for the environment, safety, health, quality and energy. This applies to the entire Evonik Group and is based on legal frameworks as well as internal guidelines and group standards.

As a responsible department, we regularly consider the impact of our production activities in terms of product safety and regulation. With the help of a centrally provided tool, we collect worldwide relevant information about our products and derive fields of action from them.

We analyse and evaluate the developments and effects of all relevant chemical law and application law requirements on a global level in cooperation with national and international associations.

We are addressing both today's issues and the looming challenges of a rapidly changing society in order to continue to position Evonik well in the competitive environment.

It is important to us that Evonik employees and those that possess critical know-how feel comfortable in a secure work environment.

As the responsible specialist unit, Group Security advises and supports all divisions and regions on security-related topics in order to achieve the ambitious security goals and to ensure and sustain the competitive edge of Evonik in the long term.

The focus of the security work is on the following:

• Personnel Security
• Site/Transport Security
• Know-how Protection
• Project/Third Party Security