The Day recognises the importance of environment, health and safety to the company.
Saint-Gobain colleagues in the UK and Ireland are joining 170,000 of the Group’s employees worldwide today (Tuesday 13 October) in recognition of the importance of environment, health and safety to mark Saint-Gobain’s International EHS Day 2020.
In previous years, recognition of this annual event has taken on a different form, led by workshops, training and activities across various sites. However, this year over 16,000 employees in the UK and Ireland are coming together virtually with online workshops and virtual content, as well as socially distanced activities in their sites and branches.
The day is centred around the importance of EHS risk perception with activities focusing on the need for risk identification and prevention with the ethos that everyone can do something, both individually and collectively to help ensure that ‘here, everything will go well’.
This year the key themes of EHS Day in the UK and Ireland focus on a commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, embedding good safety behaviours, and health and wellbeing as it adapts to new ways of working during the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year Saint-Gobain made a pledge committing itself to reach net-zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050 to help keep the global temperature increase within 1.5°C. In the UK and Ireland, it is currently working to review and reduce its carbon impact as a business, as well as the impact of the manufacture and distribution of its products and solutions, to achieve this before 2050.
Its interim targets set for 2025 are: reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 20%, its water discharges by 80%, and its non-recovered waste by 50%. These commitments are in place for 2025 and will help make sure it is on the right path to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.
It has already made progress to reduce its carbon emissions in the UK and Ireland, for example in its Saint-Gobain Glass and Saint-Gobain Insulation UK businesses, while it has introduced heat mapping of the manufacturing process to reduce and recover waste heat.
It has also increased the amount of recycled glass content in its products, meaning less energy to melt raw materials, and in British Gypsum it has invested in new plasterboard dryers to increase efficiency so that boards dry using less energy.
Mike Chaldecott, CEO Saint-Gobain UK and Ireland, said: “It’s been great to collaborate with our colleagues on EHS Day to discuss our zero-carbon roadmap and the ways in which we can all contribute individually at work and in our personal lives towards a zero-carbon future.
"I think that our new purpose, making the world a better home, summarises our role and commitment perfectly. Playing our part in meeting the climate challenge is essential to making the world a better home. This can unite us in this ambition to reduce our carbon emissions and our impact on the environment.”
