Driving the decarbonisation of our operations
Leveraging best practices, even small yet powerful ones, is driving the decarbonisation of our operations and helping us reach our long-term Company goal of being climate positive by 2050. It also supports our customers in achieving their own goals.
Our Utilities Best Practices programme has been pivotal in unlocking the potential of these measures since 2022. We have identified and implemented 59 best practices in 10 categories to reduce energy consumption and, in turn, our scope 1+2 emissions. We have shared some of these with our customers – contributing to cutting their scope 3 emissions – as well as our peers in the industry.
Best practices programme
Our practices mostly focus on being more efficient in managing buildings, adopting renewable technologies, and technical processes. The 10 categories are: compressed air, steam/condensate, insulation, renewable technologies, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), preventative maintenance, building management, lighting, heat recovery, and behavioural mindset.
By late 2023, these practices had been implemented with an overall progress of 87% in our production and commercial sites, improving efficiency, increasing reliability, saving costs and helping us meet our sustainability targets. Progress at all sites is tracked through an interactive dashboard created by Givaudan's Engineering Centre of Excellence. Once implementation is complete, the dashboard can track how well sites are maintaining the best practices.
Comprehensive information about the practices and guidelines for using them are shared with our employees through our intranet and regular technical webinars.
Saving energy and water at the heart of our actions
We would not be able to produce our ingredients without compressed air and steam, and we aim to optimise their generation and use to save as much electricity, other fuel and water as possible. For example, at our Fragrance & Beauty site in Switzerland, we experimented with slowly reducing the pressure of compressed air and steam to find the optimum level for efficiency without disrupting operations.
Wasted heat is another target. Some processes have a hot box to heat ingredients, and these can be left running even when not needed. At the Mount Olive and Towaco Fragrance & Beauty sites in New Jersey, USA, we installed timers, cutting electricity use – a very simple solution. Another cost-free measure is turning off exhaust fans when not needed. It is not all about operational best practices, however. We also encourage employees to have the environment in mind in everyday work, like turning off lights as they leave a room. Utilities can be overlooked, but we are working to bring about a mindset change to conserve resources. This represents a quick win that is good for the environment as well as our profitability.
Collaborating with our customers: going beyond our operations
L’Oréal, our long-standing customer, invited us to take part in their ‘Spread the best practices’ platform along with other top suppliers to foster progress on sustainability.
“In our pursuit of ambitious targets, sharing sustainability best practices with partners like Givaudan is essential to our collective success.”
L’Oréal
We have tracked our progress and uploaded the proven efficient solutions around reduction of our scope 1+2 emissions to L’Oréal’s platform, enabling them to engage further their scope 3 on decarbonisation. Embracing collaboration, L’Oréal also invited us to take part in an information-sharing webinar with other suppliers, fostering a valuable exchange of knowledge and best practices.