Change for the better
Change for the better
We are constantly exploring new ways to minimise our environmental impact.
DECARBONISING CAR PARKS
Our team in Slovenia has started decarbonising its car park. E-charging stations have been installed and parking spaces have been reserved for e-vehicles in front of the Knauf Insulation Experience Center. An e-car has also been bought by the company to allow colleagues first-hand experience of the benefits of electric vehicles.
CWMBRAN REDUCES EMISSIONS BY MORE THAN 5,000 TONNES
A £7 million upgrade of our UK manufacturing plant in Cwmbran has reduced the plant’s annual emissions by just over 5,000 tonnes per year. The upgrade included a complete rebuild of the furnace, plant-wide refurbishments and the introduction of the latest technology as well as energy efficiency improvements such as installation of new turbo compressors, drives and motors.In addition, about 2,000 light fittings were replaced with energy-efficient LEDs, all plant staff attended energy awareness workshops and energy efficiency has become an integral part of the induction for new employees. “Continuous improvement has driven culture change and helped us save energy by standardising our processes and minimising wastes,” says Femi Olatunji, Plant Energy Manager.
SCHEME TO TAKE-BACK PALLETS
In Western Europe Knauf Insulation has launched a pilot take-back scheme to reuse delivery pallets from our Glass Mineral Wool plants. Pallets used to deliver products are now recovered from customers by a partner company and brought back for reuse. Plans are in the pipeline to extend the initiative to other sites and countries where the scheme will be known as KI(RE)3 — for reduce, recycle and reuse. In France alone, more than 1.5 million square metres of timber are used to manufacture 48 million pallets every year.
CERTIFIED TO FOUR KEY STANDARDS OF MANAGEMENT
Knauf Insulation is the only company in its sector to have all plants worldwide certified to ISO 9001 standard for quality management; ISO 14001 for environmental management; ISO 50001 for energy management and to OHSAS 18001 for health and safety management.
The standards are all voluntary but internationally recognised as independently verifying a company’s performance claims.
RECYCLING SERVICE FOR CUSTOMERS
Knauf Insulation is offering a new smart waste recycling service to customers in the Netherlands who use our Glass Mineral Wool for modular buildings. For a monthly membership fee of less than €500 we will take care of all related production waste. A smart software system monitors the output of our waste recycling machinery at customers’ sites and automatically notifies our pick-up partner company when the waste is ready for collection. After being returned to our recycling partner, the waste is then fed into their production process to make new insulation. We aim to collect 325 tonnes of waste a year giving customers peace of mind and helping improve everyone’s environmental impact.
RENEWABLE ENERGY AT BELGIAN PLANT
Our Visé plant is now one of the top five companies using renewable energy in the Wallonia region of Belgium. The installation of 6,000 photovoltaic panels at the plant in 2019 will provide 1,700 MWh of energy every year — around 2% of the annual energy required by the plant. We also aim to reduce lighting energy by up to 80% through a light modification process.
-------------------------------
Discover the rest of our Annual Review 2019