27 May 2019
Almost every company will probably claim to consider sustainability of paramount importance. But there are huge differences in the vision and the strategy on how to operate in a sustainable way. Do you buy certificates, do you pay carbon tax, or do you take concrete action yourself? Puratos strongly believes in the latter and sets ambitious sustainability goals for itself. Franck Cassé, Environmental Sustainability Programme Manager at Puratos, explains Puratos’ vision on sustainability and what actions are put into place to achieve the ambitious goals. “As a large company, we can really make a difference.”
Sustainability is more than just compensating
For Puratos, operating in a sustainable way is not just about compensating what you take from the environment. Franck: “We want to do a lot more than that. The shareholders, the management team and the employees share the vision that Puratos only has a future if the company can make a strong social and environmental contribution. Operating in a sustainable way is a necessity. What good is profit, when the earth is being destroyed? And we don’t want to wait for governments to take action. As a large company, with 64 production sites in 46 countries and with customers in more than 100 countries, Puratos can really make a difference.”
Environment champions at every production site
How is sustainability embedded in the organisation? “Puratos is a decentralised organisation. We don’t have a big global sustainability team. We appointed environment champions at each of our main production sites: the person with the best fit in order to lead the sustainability programme at that site. Together with me, the environment champions start all kinds of sustainable initiatives. They don’t get extra money to do this, they are intrinsically motivated to contribute to a better environment. Employees of Puratos are really proud to work for a company that takes concrete sustainable actions.”
Ambitious goals: carbon neutral and water balance
“There are many areas you can focus on when trying to operate in a more sustainable way. For Puratos, the focus is on carbon emissions and on the water balance. Progressively, we will incorporate other aspects as well. But we focus on these two topics, because we can really make a difference here. We have set ambitious goals: we want to be carbon neutral in 2025, we want to reduce our water usage by 25% in 2030 and by that time, all the water we discharge directly to rivers needs to be good for the fish. To reach these goals, we direct 4 to 5% of all our investments to the environment.
Concrete actions lead to sustainability
Being a decentralised company, many sustainability projects are set up to reach the worldwide sustainable goals. Every site takes its own concrete actions. And above that, there are the Puratos-wide programmes like the Planet Programme and the Cacao-Trace Programme, that not only aim to do good for the environment, but also for the community. Every project has to meet three criteria to lead to sustainable results. “Everything we do must be good for the people, good for the environment and good for the economy. A project can only be sustainable if it meets all these three criteria.”
This blog is part of a series of CSR blogs about Puratos and sustainability. In the second blog, you can read all about Puratos’ activities to become carbon neutral in 2025. And in the third blog, you can discover the actions Puratos has set up to reduce and control the use of water.
