Environment@brenntag

Health, Occupational Safety and Environmental Protection at Brenntag - More Than a Matter of Course

It goes without saying that today's companies should take environmental protection needs and the health and safety of employees into consideration in the performance of their business operations. Brenntag and its subsidiaries have long been conscious of this responsibility. Decisions on all levels of the company - be it business management, sales or logistics - take full account of the requirements of health and environmental protection as well as chemical safety. And health, occupational safety and environmental protection also play a key role in the "everyday" jobs - like warehousing, order make-up, filling, transport and delivery of chemical products.

There are many sides to "HSE" (Health, Safety, Environment) at Brenntag: our commitment in this area is underlined by voluntary participation in projects like the "Responsible Care initiative" of the chemical industry and the chemical distributors as well as by the implementation of the "Product Stewardship guidelines" and the central registration of all environmental and chemical-related data in a chemical database, logistics planning based on ecological considerations or the investments made in environmental protection when we build new facilities.

The examples profiled here provide you with some idea of what we at Brenntag do to protect our natural environment and to promote health and safety at work. They also show that Brenntag's "HSE" commitment extends far beyond what is required by law and the measures that any self-respecting company would take as a matter of course.

Accessing Information: the Environmental Database

During the change in ownership from Stinnes AG to Bain Capital, Brenntag conducted a comprehensive due diligence audit together with URS as independent expert. In 2003, the environmental risks at each of the approx. 350 locations were investigated and assessed. The audit also covered historical data, which can, among other things, provide pointers to potential contaminated sites.

This work was originally part of the preparations for the sale of the company. It now forms the basis for ongoing improvements in the area of environmental protection, as the Brenntag environmental database creates a whole new level of transparency and serves as a starting point for activities like the decontamination of potentially polluted sites. One of the reasons the database is so important is that Brenntag has grown substantially through acquisitions during the last ten to fifteen years and there has previously been no uniform database for environmentally relevant data.