We are dedicated to providing the highest quality products and services to our customers, while minimizing our impact on the environment, striving for energy and resource efficiency and helping to improve life quality.
Our Commitment
Compliance and Integrity
We ensure that regulatory compliance, integrity and ethical conduct are the foundations in every place we operate.
Vision ZERO
We continually improve our systems and aspire to ZERO incidents, injuries or emissions.
Our People
We develop our employees by helping them grow. We provide safe workplaces, care for employees’ well-being and foster their involvement and participation.
Our Environment
We improve our environmental footprint by continually reducing energy, water and material demand per unit.
Value for Society
We create value for society by innovating science-based solutions along the Healthcare Continuum® to develop the medicines and consumer products of tomorrow. We engage in the communities where we operate.
As part of this commitment, we foster transparency and reporting in line with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, which represent the industry standard for reporting on economic, environmental and social indicators. The Lonza Sustainability Report 2019 focuses on the topics most relevant to our business, as identified in the 2018 materiality assessment.
Material Topics and Sustainable Development Goals
In 2018 we performed a materiality assessment with the involvement of more than 100 stakeholders to prioritize our initiatives and the focal areas that best support sustainable development. A total of 16 topics were identified as the most relevant for us globally, reflecting the sustainability benefits and impacts of our operations, products and services along our value chain.
The Sustainability Report 2019 provides more detail on each topic and outlines our management approach and performance results.
Material Topics for Lonza
Economic
- Economic Performance
- Anti-Corruption
- Quality and Reliability
- Customer Satisfaction
Environmental
- Energy Conservation and Efficiency
- GHG Management
- Waste and Recycling
- Environmental Compliance
- Innovation
Social
- Occupational Health and Safety
- Non-Discrimination
- Protection of Human Rights
- Customer Health and Safety
- Socioeconomic Compliance
- Talent Management
- Employee Engagement
In addition to the materiality topics, we also recognize the importance and relevance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goals contain a broad range of sustainable development themes, including alleviating poverty and hunger, improving health and education, reducing inequalities, promoting responsible consumption, combatting climate change and protecting natural resources. There is a collective ambition to achieve these interconnected goals by 2030 worldwide.
We are committed to contributing to the realization of these goals. From the 17 SDGs, we have identified the eight that we consider the most relevant for our industry, operations and sustainability focal areas.
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
We contribute to the SDGs through our crop protection solutions, which improve crop yields and food quality. Similarly, our nutritional supplements and our products, services and cutting-edge technologies help save, extend and enhance lives. Our company is an equal opportunities employer which empowers employees and invests to improve innovation and resource efficiency. We have also established partnerships and sponsoring programs for research, education and basic healthcare.
Safety and Sustainability Targets
Our long-term goal is to improve our sustainability performance and reduce our environmental footprint. Using 2018 as the baseline, we have defined the targets for 2019 to 2030 (see the table below). Moreover, we are working to achieve a greenhouse gas reduction of more than 50% compared with our 2010 carbon footprint intensity, in line with the Paris Agreement timeline.
Our safety targets are aligned with our Vision Zero initiative, which aims to accomplish zero workplace injuries or illnesses, zero manufacturing process incidents, zero environmental incidents and zero transportation incidents involving our products or services. Our 2019 safety targets were set on a local basis and linked to metrics based on identification and closure of safety related corrective actions at each of our operating sites. This moved us from a lagging metric based on injuries that can have high year-on-year variability, to a leading metric that drives employee behavior and involvement.
Zero lost time injuries (aspiration) |
|
|---|---|
24% energy reduction |
|
36% CO2 reduction, e.g. through more renewable electricity |
|
24% waste reduction |
|
Corrective actions and accidents (defined by target) |
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|---|---|
2% energy reduction |
|
3% CO2 reduction, more renewable electricity |
|
2% waste reduction |
|
We applied targets per CHF 1 million sales on the basis of our diverse product portfolio, which ranges from manufacturing of chemical bulk products to pharmaceutical ingredients; from medical capsules to food supplements; from gene technology to cell-media productions. This diversity could only be reconciled with a financially focused denominator.
Indicator |
FY 2018 |
FY 2019 |
Change in % |
Status |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Energy (GJ/million CHF) |
2,231 |
2,071 |
-7% |
Achieved |
||||
CO2-eq (scope 1 & 2 mt/million CHF)1 |
151 |
142 |
-7% |
Achieved |
||||
Waste (mt/million CHF)2 |
26.1 |
26.4 |
+1% |
Not achieved |
||||
|
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In addition to the global goals, sites set local targets for material topics for their locations, e.g. emissions, water quantity and parameters. Sites will develop a three-year roadmap which will include their action plans around global and local targets.
A Systematic Approach to Safety and Sustainability
Our approach to safety and sustainability in Lonza is systematic. We have policies in place, including our aspirational Vision Zero, for the reduction of accidents, incidents and emissions. Across all our sites, we collect data for accidents and incidents, energy, water and waste and analyze deviations from established goals. We regularly visit and audit our sites to identify compliance risks and procedures that do not meet Lonza standards.
We also review the impact of workplace risks on our business performance and find ways to mitigate these risks. In this context, we see safety and sustainability as opportunities that allow us to maximize our value creation for society, our customers and our people while reducing our environmental footprint.
At the end of the reporting year, approximately 200 people worked in the core EHS field. EHS operating costs amounted to CHF 64.4 million in 2019. Capital expenditure on EHS was CHF 77 million in 2019.