Responsible Care Management System

Strategy

• Revised and updated goals for safety, security, health and environmental protection

BASF’s Responsible Care Management System comprises the global rules, standards and procedures for safety, security, health and environmental protection for the various stations along our value chain. Our regulations cover the transportation of raw materials, activities at our sites and warehouses, and distribution of our products as well as our customers’ application of the products. At our sites, we address energy and climate protection as one of the topics covered by our energy management. Specifications for implementing these measures are laid out in binding directives that are introduced in consultation with employee representatives. These describe the relevant responsibilities, requirements and assessment methods. We regularly conduct audits to monitor our performance and progress. We use the findings from these audits for continual improvement.

We set ourselves ambitious goals for safety, security, health and environmental protection. Our guidelines and requirements are constantly updated. We revised our goals in 2015. For example, we replaced our previous goals for water with an expanded goal for sustainable water management. We introduced a new, ambitious goal for process safety, which aims to reduce the number of plant safety incidents. In addition, we set ourselves a new energy and climate protection goal for the global implementation of our energy management system. In this way, we can identify and launch measures to increase energy efficiency in an even more flexible manner, depending on local raw material and energy prices.

We assess potential risks and weak points in all areas ranging from research and production to logistics, and how these could affect the environment, the surrounding community or the safety and security of our employees. In our databases, we document accidents, near misses and safety-related incidents at our sites as well as along our transportation routes. We foster awareness of workplace safety and safe behavior in every individual with our worldwide safety initiatives.

Audits

• 130 environmental, safety and security audits conducted at 82 sites

Regular audits help ensure that standards are met for safety, security, health and environmental protection. We carry out audits at BASF sites and at companies in which BASF is a majority shareholder. We have defined our regulations for Responsible Care audits in a global Group directive. During our audits, we create a safety and environmental profile that shows if our performance is sufficient to properly address the existing hazard potential. If this is not the case, we agree on measures and conduct follow-up audits on their implementation soon afterward. One result of the audits showed the necessity of swiftly implementing new guidelines and processes, for example.

Our internal audit system complies with the standards for external auditing procedures ISO 19011 and OHSAS 18001. Worldwide, 180 BASF production sites are certified in accordance with ISO 14001 (2014: 191)¹. We conducted short-notice audits on various topics worldwide in 2015, which included facility inspections and document reviews. In 2015, 130 environmental, safety and security audits were carried out at 82 sites, along with 68 short-notice audits on various topics at 44 sites in the BASF Group. We audited 53 sites with respect to occupational medicine and health protection.