In our mission statement, "
Bayer: Science For A Better Life", we define our role as a good and responsible corporate citizen. In keeping with the principles of sustainable development, we strive to balance economic, ecological and social benefits with each other through our activities.
Bayer also wants to meet its responsibilities in matters of climate change. We take climate change as an environmental and economic challenge seriously. It affects the foundations of our commercial activity. On the one hand, endeavors in the field of environmental protection have to be strengthened. On the other, greater attention needs to be paid to innovative solutions to deal with the consequences of climate change. Bayer intends to make specific contributions to both.
Our starting point is a favorable one. Bayer has already been recognized internationally as "
best-in-class" in environmental protection and as a leading company in its sector. In production, we have been able to increase energy efficiency in recent years through technological innovations and have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Bayer products make a direct contribution to saving energy and conserving resources in our daily lives, for example in the form of insulating materials.
We intend to intensify our efforts even further. We have set ourselves the following climate objectives:
We are continuously working on minimizing our own carbon footprint by improving operational efficiency as well as our customers' carbon footprint by providing market solutions. Our efforts to reduce emissions cover all operations. When it comes to our production sites, we have already made great progress: Between 1990 and 2005, we cut our greenhouse gas emissions by more than a third, primarily as a result of improved energy efficiency through improved technologies, new chemical processes and the application of approaches like our
Bayer Climate Check and our innovative energy management system STRUCTese. Our activities in production are supplemented by supporting initiatives in sales (e.g., improved car fleet) and administration (e.g., substitution of business travel by videoconferencing and initiatives like Bayer Green Office and Green Data Center).
For the years 2005 - 2020 we set a new ambitious target:
We want to further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product sold by -35 percent.
To achieve this objective we increased the sub-group specific emission reduction target of Bayer MaterialScience from 25% to 40%, the absolute emission reduction target of Bayer HelthCare from 5% to 10% and we maintain the ambitious absolute emission reduction target ob Bayer CropScience at ambitious 15%. Improving our operations creates a win-win-situation for the environment and Bayer. Less greenhouse gas emissions improve the climate and – via a reduced energy bill – Bayer's bottom-line.
In many different ways, our products play their part in saving energy and conserving resources. Examples are our polyurethane materials for insulation and our
polycarbonate products for lightweight solutions in mobility. With its
EcoCommercial Building Program, Bayer integrates all players in building construction and promotes the use of construction material to further reduce emissions. As an innovator company, we have initiated various research and development projects to develop new solutions. Our project portfolio covers solutions for climate mitigation – e.g., a technology that improves energy efficiency in
chlorine production by 30 to 50 percent – as well as solutions for climate adaptation – e.g., the development of
stress tolerant plants that can better adapt to changing climate conditions.
Climate change is an enormous challenge that no player can tackle alone. We believe that high-profile partnerships are required to improve impact. Therefore we have joined forces with institutions like the
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to promote environmental awareness, the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines, to research environmentally sustainable rice production and the
Innovative Vector Control Consortium to improve vector control. We have also entered into research and development partnerships with leading academic institutions and private sector companies to further develop solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation. All in all, we want to use our commitment to environmental protection to develop more solutions and win-win situations to help us deal with the challenges the future will bring – a goal that is true to our Mission Statement "
Bayer: Science For A Better Life".