Compliance with environmental standards, norms and regulatory requirements is a matter of course to us. Furthermore, our specialists in research and development, engineering and production constantly strive to reduce our environmental footprint beyond legal requirements where technically possible and ecologically reasonable.
We conduct research and incessantly work on further reducing our CO2 emissions. But nature shows where this commitment encounters its natural limits: raw-material-related emissions, which cannot be avoided in the processing of raw materials, can hardly be reduced any further.
Our competence center for environment and energy intensively works on constantly increasing energy efficiency and on measures designed to continuously reduce energy consumption. Based on energy efficiency analyses, saving and optimization potential is identified systematically, and the corresponding environmentally relevant investment projects are developed, realized and implemented worldwide.
The increased use of secondary raw materials serves to secure raw material supply in the long term, to reduce cost-intensive raw material procurement and to improve, through the reduction of CO2 emissions, the ecological footprint and the environmental balance of the Group on a sustained basis. When revert materials are broken out, the raw materials required for new production are recycled, while the idea of the zero waste concept is applied at the same time. We were one of the first refractories suppliers to treat magnesia carbon converter bricks from the steel industry.
The minerals are extracted from the Group’s own mines using state-of-the-art, sustainable methods and processes. The objective is to optimize the economic and especially ecological use of the deposits, thus securing availability for future generations.
Our reforestation and recultivation activities go beyond the legally defined minimum and are carried out continuously – not only at mining sites, but also around production sites. Our objective is the recultivation to near-nature habitats, because reforested and therefore stable soil provides for safety and often promotes a new diversity of species in fauna and flora.