● SK chemicals Uses Five Times More Alternative Energy Than Three Years Ago

- SK chemicals published a new sustainability report, detailing the performance of its
   environmental management last year.
- The company has used five times more alternative energy, while reducing greenhouse gas
   emissions by 11 percent.

SK chemicals published its Sustainability Report 2012 and disclosed a scorecard on its sustainable management and performance last year.

SK chemicals’ Sustainability Reports share with stakeholders detailed information on the company’s economic, social, and environmental efforts for sustainable management and growth.

This year’s report marks the second occasion on which SK chemicals publishes such a sustainability report. SK chemicals is now Korea’s only company that publishes sustainability reports on a comprehensive range of topics encompassing both the chemicals manufacturing industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

This year’s report details the Green Triple 40 campaign that SK chemicals has been waging for years, including the campaign’s progress and the company’s future plans regarding it.

Green Triple 40 Campaign ☞ Green Triple 40: The Green Triple 40 Campaign represents SK chemicals’ vision for sustainable management. Through it the company envisions increasing each employee’s participation in volunteerism up to 40 hours, reducing the carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent, and increasing the proportion of eco-friendly goods in the company’s revenue structure to 40 percent. To achieve these goals, SK chemicals has developed sustainability strategies for completing a green culture, green processes, and green products. It has begun to develop a companywide process for managing the implementation of these strategies, and is also actively developing new eco-friendly projects

According to the report, SK chemicals used 2,025 Terajoules* (1 TJ = 1 trillion joules) of alternative energy in total throughout 2012. The figure is five times as great as the 346 Terajoules of alternative energy that the company used in 2009. SK chemicals also successfully reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by 11.3 percent, from 526,757 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2009 to 467,163 tCO2e in 2012.

SK chemicals explains that these eco-friendly innovations have been possible thanks to the Eco Green Boiler system at the Ulsan plant that runs on wood wastes, as well as to using biogas and bio liquefied fuels from the company’s own wastewater processing plants.

EcoLab, the innovative eco-friendly building that houses the company’s headquarters and research center, also played a role in the company’s increasing sustainability. The building consumed 9,017 megawatts hours of energy and 66,128 cubic meters of water, and generated 5,613 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. These figures are considerably lower (47 percent, 39 percent, and 28 percent, respectively) than the 13,266 megawatts hour of energy, 91,770 cubic meters of water, and 7,177 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent that a conventional building of EcoLab’s size consumes and generates on average.

	EcoLab	Other buildings (avg.)	Margin of reduction
Energy	9,017MWh	13,266MWh	47%
Water	66,128㎥	91,770㎥	39%
Greenhouse gases	5,613tCO₂e	7,177tCO₂	28%

At the same time, the share of eco-friendly products in SK chemicals’ revenue structure has also increased, along with the rate of employees’ participation in volunteerism and good causes. The proportion of bio-plastics and other eco-friendly goods in the company’s revenue structure increased from 14.6 percent in 2010 to 17.0 percent in 2012. The number of Green Points granted for employees’ participation in eco-friendly activities also grew by 64 percent, from 1.46 million points in 2011 to 2.4 million points in 2012.

The report details SK chemicals’ performance and achievements not only in eco-friendliness, but in other areas of management as well, including: the development of the first cell-culture influenza vaccine in Korea; the certification of eco-friendly materials overseas; the global clinical trials of the new bio drug, CSL627, among various important activities and developments.

The report also discusses SK chemicals’ systems for sustainable management, human rights management, ethical management and fair trade efforts, and contributions to local society.

A spokesperson for Lloyd Register Quality Assurance (LRQA)* that has given the report a third-party independent verification commented: “While there are numerous companies paying increasing attention to the issue of sustainable management, there are not that many that have developed comprehensive systems concerning the sustainability of their products, manufacturing processes, and organizational cultures like SK chemicals. This year’s report will set an example for Korean businesses as a comprehensive report detailing the strategies and success factors of SK chemicals’ sustainable management in all areas, including economic, social, and environmental.”

SK chemicals intends to increase and diversify the range of efforts it makes to ensure the sustainability of its operations, the environment, and society at large.

A company spokesperson thus explained: “Eco-friendliness and sustainability are no longer perceived as mere corporate social responsibilities at SK chemicals. Instead, they mark indispensable factors for the company’s survival and success. We will strengthen all the sustainable management systems we have built so far so that we can contribute better to improving the natural environments and health of our customers.”

LRQA is a sustainability assessment agency headquartered in London and now operating offices around the globe. The agency provides verification services in 31 countries worldwide, including South Korea, and has issued over 44,000 certificates so far.

Terms:
*Joule: an international unit of work and energy. One joule (J) is the amount of energy that one needs to move an object in the direction of a force by one meter by one newton (N) of force. The unit was named after J. P. Joule, a British physicist who has left seminal works on heat and work.
*Ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e): an amount of gases converted into an equivalent amount of carbon dioxides. The unit is usually used with the six major greenhouse gases, i.e., carbon dioxides, methane, nitrous oxides, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluorides.
*LRQA(Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance): part of the Lloyd’s Register Group that assesses client companies’ efforts for managing risks in quality, safety, environmental impact, and businesses. The group is now registered on 24 accreditation bodies and issues certificates in 120 or so countries.



Caption:
SK chemicals published a sustainability report on May 29, detailing its eco-friendly activities and major achievements from 2012. Two employees are smiling and holding their sustainability reports in their hands.