Operations
We are constantly working to minimize our environmental footprint by preventing pollution on our sites, reducing waste, managing water use, and improving our energy efficiency to limit carbon dioxide.
Our 2020 Targets:
- Reduce landfilled waste from production by 10%, from a 2015 baseline
- 10% energy efficiency improvement, from a 2015 baseline
Energy Efficiency
Energy is a precious resource, and saving energy reduces both our environmental footprint and our costs. We build our energy efficiency program by:
- Defining an action plan for each site, including operational and investment-related improvements
- Sharing effective ideas and best practices through an active energy network to help sites achieve their goals (for instance, cross-plant audits and energy-focused visits to other companies )
- Tracking all actions on a quarterly basis at each business unit
- Certification of our key plants with ISO 50001 as the norm for our large European sites
How do we calculate energy efficiency?
Energy efficiency is the ratio of the energy we use to manufacture our products to the energy we would have used in a “business as usual” situation. Compared to a simple energy / ton indicator, it corrects potential biases associated with changes of product mixes and process routes (e.g. internal vs. external casting or recycling balance).
Preventing On-Site Pollution
We work hard to prevent pollution at our sites by maintaining adequate tools and processes (including internal directives and guidelines) and making sure we have the appropriate protection and containment equipment. Our air emissions remain relatively constant and of low intensity.
Our air emissions policy is based on:
- Strict compliance, with a strengthened follow-up of legislation at site level
- Adequate action plans to reduce or limit emissions, linked to more efficient investments and controls
Reducing Landfilled Waste
Constellium has set an overall reduction target of 10% for the amount of landfilled waste resulting from our production operations.
Today most of our production waste in recycled.
However, on one hand, we produce "technical" waste that is not recyclable by traditional mean and that goes to landfill such as flue-gas dust, sludge from wastewater treatment, and waste from demolition.
On the other hand, and specifically in our US plants, we still generate municipal waste that currently goes to landfill. We are undertaking sorting and recycling of this scrap.
Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Climate change is one of the biggest environmental, social, and economic challenges we all face. At Constellium, we recognize the effect of human activity on the climate and understand the need to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Our climate change mitigation program is based not only on our own emissions and energy efficiency program, but on a complete life cycle approach. We believe that without conducting a thorough Life Cycle Assessment, simply reducing our emissions will not sufficiently diminish our global carbon footprint. Understanding the overall picture is crucial to making the right decisions.
We are working to define an ambitious yet realistic emissions reduction target, consistent with our position in the aluminium value chain and taking into account the full life cycle of our products.
- Our product mix is moving toward more energy-intensive products such as automotive body sheet that help decrease GHG emissions during their use.
- We are increasing our recycling capacity, since using recycled aluminium reduces the need for primary aluminium and significantly reduces GHG emissions. We realize that this also increases our own emissions for the same quantity of products shipped, and the environmental impact of recycling and casting is incorporated into our figures.