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Symrise gets sustainability recognition

5 Dec 2016

Symrise has announced that it is one of the five most sustainable large corporations in Germany as voted for by a panel of twelve experts of the 2016 German Sustainability Awards.

Symrise has announced that it is one of the five most sustainable large corporations in Germany.

That’s the conclusion according to a panel of twelve experts of the 2016 German Sustainability Awards. Symrise says it impressed the judges in particular with its systematic sustainability management, continual improvements both in the supply chain and within the company as well as measures to preserve biodiversity. The sustainability awards were presented to companies of different sizes in a total of eleven categories as well as municipalities and researchers.

“It is a great honor and an important recognition to receive the top placement in this competition. It shows us that we are on the right path,” said Hans Holger Gliewe, Chief Sustainability Officer at Symrise. “We hope that other large corporations will be motivated by this to be more socially responsible and adopt more environmentally friendly production methods.”

The award is an initiative of the German Sustainability Award Foundation in cooperation with the Federal Government of Germany and various municipal umbrella organizations, trade associations, civic organizations and research institutes. The panel of judges includes scientists and representatives from the environmental protection group NABU (Naturschutzbund Deutschland e. V.) and the chamber of commerce and industry DIHK (Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag e. V.).

Symrise sees commitment to increased social and ecological sustainability as an integral part of its corporate strategy. The company has created a “Sustainability Board” for this reason, which is headed by Chief Sustainability Officer Hans Holger Gliewe and which drives sustainability efforts throughout the company. One example is the initiative Symchronize, which identifies areas and opportunities to reduce emissions and the amount of resources used across all levels of the company, including in the supply chain. Symrise says it also has a particular focus on measures to protect biodiversity in the countries where its plant-based raw materials are produced as well as fair trade relationships with the producer communities.

This is why, the company says, Symrise sponsors projects that support small-scale farmers, emphasizes environmentally friendly farming and invests in the social infrastructure. The company’s vanilla project in Madagascar and its involvement in the hub of biodiversity known as “Ecoparque” in the Amazon region are part of this. Sustainable production is an integral part of the business model at Symrise: Thanks to innovative methods, the company’s workers in Lower Saxony have been able to save about 50% of the fresh water needed to produce menthols as well as 500 kilotons of CO2 each year, for example. The company also extracts raw materials from side streams through its patented Symtrap process. Between 2010 and 2015, Symrise says it managed to reduce its chemical waste by 26% and its effluent load by 33%.