The number of environmental incidents increased 11% globally year-onyear. In the Americas, environmental performance continued to improve, with the number of incidents down 18% year-on-year and down 46% from 2005 levels. Permit limit violations were down 32% in fiscal 2008. Notices of Violation from agencies in Europe and Asia rose on an Air Products-led campaign to drive better reporting combined with increased enforcement activity in those regions.

Environmental Fines
Environmental fines paid in 2008 totaled $39,000—down 7% from the prior year—and remain very low for our industry.

Managing Compliance
All of our North American sites (more than 250) are now using the SAP Compliance Management tool to administer compliance with environmental permits and regulations. This completes the second phase of our planned enterprise-wide implementation and further builds on deployment to 17 plants in North America during 2007. In addition, 47 sites in Europe are now live on the system, as well as two locations in Southeast Asia. Phase three will expand the scope of the tool to include compliance with worker safety permits, licenses and regulations, and will include all sites in Europe, Asia and South America. Global deployment of phase three is expected to be completed by early 2010.

Toxic Release Inventory (U.S.)
TRI on-site and off-site releases to air, water and land are a key performance indicator. This includes direct releases to the environment, which is a subset of the total releases and transfers reported annually to the EPA.

Our total on-site and off-site releases were flat with the prior year, following a significant decrease from 2.98 million pounds in 2005 to 1.30 million pounds in 2006—our lowest level since TRI reporting began—as a result of divestitures from our business portfolio.

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Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Sulfur Oxides (SOx)
Emissions of NOx and SOx in the U.S. (for required sites under ACC) and Europe during calendar year 2008 were 1,762 and 217 tons, respectively. This compares to 1,814 and 264 tons of NOx and SOx, respectively, in 2007. The year-on-year decrease in SOx emissions is largely attributable to the use of alternative biomass fuels at our cogeneration facility in Stockton, California. NOx emissions also were lower, driven by reduced hydrogen production in hurricane-affected areas. We are in the process of developing baseline data for these metrics.

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Hazardous Waste
Combined U.S. and Europe hazardous waste shipments of 42 million pounds were up slightly (2%) in 2008 compared with the prior year. Hazardous waste shipments in the U.S. were flat year-on-year, and up 10% in Europe due to an increase in the number of acetylene gas cylinders that were sent off-site for recycling. This increase was somewhat offset by successful waste reduction efforts in other areas.

We continue to work toward our corporate goal of reducing hazardous waste shipments in the U.S. and Europe by 20% from 2005 levels. Several key waste reduction initiatives are under way, aimed at reducing our levels of waste generation. These include programs to convert process waste streams into forms that have beneficial reuse; reduce residual product wastes by improving recovery from returned containers; optimize processes, thereby reducing by-product waste; and improve solvent recovery and reuse.

In Asia, we have identified key facilities and categories of waste and have begun a process to measure and roll up hazardous waste shipment data this year within the region. These numbers will ultimately be integrated into our corporate environmental scorecard. 

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Water
As an ACC member company, we’ve reported water consumption in the U.S. at 11.3 billion gallons for calendar year 2008. This includes water pumped, piped or otherwise brought on-site for use in manufacturing and related activities but does not reflect the effect of water returned to its original sources. Approximately half of the total water consumed is used to generate steam for our HyCO facilities. We are targeting a 10% reduction in our water consumption by 2015.

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