Responsible Care Management System

Strategy

• Worldwide safety initiatives foster awareness of workplace safety
• Ambitious 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. 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. At our sites, we cover energy and climate protection through, for example, our energy management.

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 policies and requirements are constantly updated.

We assess the potential risks and weak points of all our activities – from research to production and logistics – and the effects of these on the safety and security of our employees, the
environment or our surroundings. In our databases, we document accidents, near misses and safety-related incidents at our sites as well as along our transportation routes; appropriate measures are derived according to specific cause analyses. We foster awareness of workplace safety in every individual with our worldwide safety initiatives.

Audits

• 121 safety, security, health and environmental protection audits performed at 80 sites

Regular audits help ensure that standards are met for safety, security, health and environmental protection. We conduct 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 requirement. During our audits, we create a safety and environmental profile that shows if we are properly addressing the existing hazard potential. If this is not the case, we agree on measures and conduct follow-up audits on their implementation.

Our internal audit system complies with the standards for external auditing procedures ISO 19011 and OHSAS 18001. Worldwide, 155 BASF production sites are certified in accordance with ISO 14001 (2015: 180)¹. In the BASF Group in 2016, 121 environmental, safety and security audits were carried out at 80 sites, along with 37 short-notice audits on various topics at 33 sites. We audited 30 sites with respect to occupational medicine and health protection.