Environmental Performance

Environmental Performance

The concept of environmental sustainability

Sustainability is an integral part of our business, and environmental sustainability aimed at protecting natural resources is part of our effort to achieve our 2022 sustainability targets. In recent years we have made progress in focusing our goals and action plans to improve sustainability and environmental performance, reducing energy consumption and waste production in our plants around the world. In 2019 these targets were extended to the new, larger company resulting from the integration of General Cable in 2018.

 

The Group measures and reports the environmental impacts that are the most significant in terms of responsibility towards employees, local communities and as a competitiveness and value factor for the Group. 
The indicators used to keep track of the environmental performance of the Group are the consumption of energy and water; the quantity of hazardous and non-hazardous waste produced and the greenhouse gas emissions. 

The issue of energy consumption is a key part of our effort to protect the environment and safeguard the planet, and has always been a crucial monitoring and leverage area for Prysmian Group. Prysmian is committed to manage and optimize its energy consumption, by means of a systematic and documented system aiming at the continuous improvement of the energy efficiency, both at operational level and at organizational level.
As first step to reduce the GHG emissions from both our production processes and energy use, we quantify them.
Furthermore, since 2011 we participate in the CDP (ex Carbon Disclosure Project), an international initiative aiming to help meet the Kyoto Protocol's targets for worldwide reduction in greenhouse gases.
Water is important in our manufacturing process since large volumes are needed for cooling in the various production cycles. Over the years, we have reached an optimal use of water through recirculating systems in most of the sites and we continue our efforts and initiatives aimed at reducing water consumption in several countries across the Globe.
Waste reduction is an important step towards a more sustainable factory; decreasing the generation of waste lowers cost of disposal and reduces waste storage areas. Our efforts to reduce waste production continues over the years.
Whenever waste is unavoidable, finding the best recycling solution helps to stay cost competitive and efficient. In most of the cases, we send wastes to external authorized companies for treatment and reuse/recycle, allowing for a reduction of the quantity of waste being sent to landfills, or to incineration.

We have set clear goals and targets for company-wide improved environmental performance. Our environmental targets focus on two main areas: facilitating access to sustainable energy and infrastructure; and pursuing responsible consumption of resources. In the first ,  of annual revenue coming from low carbon products. In the second , we have set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, and are working to meet those goals. Furthermore Prysmian has fixed a target to recycle of its waste in 2020.

discover our Environmental Targets at 2020

What We’re Doing to Reach our Targets

The Group continued to replace existing lighting with low-consumption LED lamps in 2019, and introduced systems to measure energy consumption.
In particular, between 2017 and 2018 we launched a project for the installation of LED lighting systems in eleven operating units located in Italy and the UK. The LED project was already completed and tested in ten of the eleven units, and by mid-2020 the installation and testing of the new lighting systems are planned to be completed in the last British unit. IN 2019, the RE-Lamping with LED project was also started in two additional Asean sites, to be completed by 2020. 
Energy consumption measurement systems – already installed in some Countries, are planned to be installed in all the Group operating units, starting in 2020.
 
Prysmian Group continues to participate in various working parties and associations, including Europacable, Orgalime, ANIE and AICE, and the IEC Maintenance Team that is drafting the standard environmental declaration for power cables. This approach represents an opportunity for the Group to contribute to the development and implementation of a common and recognized environmental impact analysis of power cables at world level.
In 2019, the Group added new functionality to its Common Analysis cable design platform, to allow for the  calculation of the carbon footprint and recycling potential of individual cables. Each cable now has an “Eco Data” sheet that provides customers with information about recyclability and carbon footprint from materials production up in the supply chain and cable assembly processt. This new functionality is being extended to the General Cable area. 
The Group has selected some pilot projects in 2019 with the aim to implement and gradually test in four operating units in three countries, new solutions in the areas of: air compressed systems; heating; cooling; engine efficiency,  and self-production of electricity.  
The aim is to test and select the energy efficiency projects and/or initiatives which can be extended at Group level in the next years, to meet the Prysmian Group goals on energy consumption and GHG emissions.