Dubai - MENA Herald: Borouge, a leading petrochemical company that provides innovative, value creating plastics solutions, demonstrated its commitment to sustainability at the third Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association’s (GPCA) Sustainability Conference held in Dubai from 11-13 October 2016.
Organised under the theme ‘Addressing today’s challenges: Creating a sustainable and resilient future’, the Conference was opened by Dr Abdulwahab Al-Sadoun, GPCA Secretary General, and attended by leading players, professionals and experts in sustainability. The conference focused on the importance of embedding sustainability and building resilience in the core of organisations to overcome the challenge caused by the new economic, social and environmental realities to the existing operating models of businesses.
In this context, Borouge highlighted its continuous efforts to improving sustainability performance across the value chain. Borouge was represented in the conference by Obaid Saeed Al Dhaheri, Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs, Craig Halgreen, Vice President Corporate Sustainability, and Dr. Thorsten Loehl, Vice President Innovation.
“Setting ambitious medium to long-term goals not only drives extraordinary results and mobilises its workforce in a united direction, it also ensures that the organisation focuses on key value-creating drivers of sustainable development,” said Craig Halgreen Vice President Corporate Sustainability speaking at the Conference. “As part of its 2021 Sustainability Goals, Borouge is working towards the achievement of 18 measurable sustainability targets aimed at increasing performance, efficiency and profitability across the organisation. The targets support its commitments to social responsibility, environmental stewardship and economic growth in the plastics industry.”
Borouge’s six Sustainability Goals aim to protect and promote the well-being of our people, foster the welfare of our communities, optimise the use of our resources, improve the environmental impact of our products, secure the future and enhance our reputation and pursue economic prosperity and growth.
“These Sustainability Goals enhance our commitment to providing sustainable plastics solutions that address global challenges and add value to people’s lives such as food protection, access to fresh drinking water, reliable energy conservation, safe healthcare products and proper waste management practices,” Halgreen added.
Dr Loehl, Borouge’s Vice President Innovation, said that sustainability is strongly embedded into Borouge’s innovation through the high value added plastics solutions that provide key benefits to the value chain. These benefits include weight reduction, higher productivity, energy and cost saving, enhanced functionality, durability, recyclability and lower carbon/water foot print.
“To create and drive projects of high sustainability value, businesses should consider using the Product Sustainability Index (PSI) as an indicator that measures the social, environmental and economical impact of projects.” “It’s not anymore about ‘products’, but ‘innovative solutions’ by taking into account efficiency, recyclability, footprint and safety,” explained Dr. Loehl in the presentation he delivered during the Conference.
As a signatory of the Chemical Industry’s Responsible Care® Global Charter, Borouge applies the best practices and pursue continuous improvement in line with its three Pillars of Sustainability - People, Planet and Profit.
With its production capacity increased to 4.5 million tonnes of polyethylene and polypropylene, Borouge is steadily expanding its operations, innovation capabilities and geographical footprint across the Middle East and Asia and this growth is being accomplished on the basis of sound sustainability practices.
The 3rd GPCA Sustainability Conference addresses various major and pressing sustainability issues including the real cost of making and distributing chemicals, measuring the impact of sustainability efforts, the use of carbon dioxide as feedstock, the potential shift to a bio-based economy and managing climate change risk.
