In the area of "Environment", the focus in 2020 was on our packaging material. The goal was to increase the amount of packaging with a plant-based plastic content. 2.0% of our packaging should have a so-called "plant-based content". At 1.89%, we fell only slightly short of this target at the end of 2020. This was mainly due to material bottlenecks at the beginning of the year, which delayed the overall implementation somewhat. Since the start in 2020, we have nevertheless been pursuing the topic intensively and are steadily expanding the proportion of packaging with a plant-based share.

However, the focus for 2021 in the area of the environment should be on another, holistic and overriding topic: climate neutrality.

The Immergut plant will be climate-neutral - that was our goal for 2021! And we were already able to achieve this goal in July last year. We took measures to reduce our CO2 emissions, determined the share of unavoidable CO2 emissions and initiated projects to offset these together with Climate Partner. 

More information about our projects and the offset amount can be found here:

An essential factor in the area of climate neutrality is the constant claim to further reduce CO2 emissions. In this context, we took another look at our packaging in 2022 and once again focused on the issue of plant-based plastics. By switching from fossil plastics to plant-based plastics, we not only rely on renewable resources, but ultimately also reduce the CO2 footprint of our packaging.

This is followed by our new target in the area of "environment": By the end of 2022, the fossil plastic layer of the composite packaging is to be replaced by a plant-based layer in all our Immergut articles. The same applies to the lids: here, too, only plant-based plastic is to be used. 

Since June 2022, we have achieved our goal! All Immergut articles are now filled in plant-based quality!

In terms of sustainable action, the topic of waste disposal has been at the centre of our attention in the area of economy for quite some time. Here we have set ourselves the goal of reducing our total disposal volume per 1,000 units produced in the long term. 

This is important in two respects: On the one hand, high waste volumes also result in high disposal costs - an important economic factor. On the other hand, the fundamental avoidance of waste is an important aspect - especially against the background of the generally large waste of resources.

Looking back, we have achieved significant successes in this area since 2020. Starting with 16.39 kg of waste per 1,000 units produced, we were able to reduce this by almost 3 kg in the first year through various internal measures. We have thus clearly exceeded our target of a maximum of 15.5 kg. We wanted to build on this initial success in 2021 and have once again made the topic of waste disposal a focus in the area of economy. This time, the target was a maximum of 13.0 kg per 1,000 units produced. By the end of the year, we had not only achieved this target, but also significantly exceeded it. Thus, in December we were able to record an average total disposal quantity of only 11.74 kg per 1,000 units produced.

A great success - economically and ecologically!

We now need to reduce this level again slightly and then also maintain it in the long term! Therefore, our target for 2022: max. 11.5 kg total disposal quantity per 1,000 units produced.

In the area of social issues, we have been focusing on occupational safety since 2020. Here we have set ourselves the goal of reducing our lost time due to accidents in relation to the total hours worked. The key figure monitored for this purpose describes the percentage of days lost due to accidents. It thus indicates how long an employee was unable to return to work after an accident at work. Indirectly, it allows conclusions to be drawn about the severity of the accidents. The lower this rate is, the shorter the periods of absence were and the less severe the accidents were.

Looking back, we can now also report initial successes here. We started at the end of 2019 with a rate of 0.2705%. Our goal was to reduce this to 0.250% in 2020. Unfortunately, we were not yet able to achieve this in the first step, so we ended the year with a default rate of 0.2804%. Therefore, it was a matter of course for us to take up the topic of occupational safety again in 2021 and to pursue it consistently. The internal measures we implemented paid off here, so that we were able to reduce the absenteeism rate to 0.2163%. This means that we have not only reached our target of 0.250%, but have even clearly exceeded it!

A great sign of occupational safety in action!