Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility at Evonik Corporation

Sustainability is a central element in our purpose "Leading Beyond Chemistry". Evonik is the one providing innovative solutions that help to make our lives more sustainable, more healthy, and more comfortable. Through our innovative capability and leading technology positions we empower our customers to offer a broad range of resource-efficient solutions. Examples are amino acids for animal nutrition, additives for hydraulic fluids or functional silanes for surface protection of buildings. Around 50 % of the sales generated by our chemical segments come from products that make a measurable contribution to improving the resource efficiency of their applications.

Environmental Sustainability

To reduce Evonik's carbon footprint still further, we are continuously optimizing our processes along the entire value chain. We use alternative raw materials and biotechnological methods wherever this is possible and makes sense.

Sound sustainability management does not begin with our own products and production processes. Our purchasing volume has a significant impact on society and the environment. As a founding member of the industry initiative “Together for Sustainability”, we are driving forward transparency and sustainability along the supply chain.

Since we achieved our target for the reduction in specific greenhouse gas emissions ahead of schedule, the executive board introduced new environmental targets in February 2019. Our target now is a 50 percent reduction in absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025, compared with the level in 2008—the first full year after the establishment of Evonik. This affirms our commitment to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

At present, we assume an average reduction in climate-relevant emissions of 3 percent a year. The relatively short period up to 2025 reflects our view that it is not currently possible to predict technological and regulatory developments beyond this date with sufficient certainty. In addition to this, by 2025 we intend to reduce the scope 3 emissions related to our raw material “backpack” by 15 percent (reference base: 2020).