On October 24, 2019, Symrise became a member of the global initiative RE100. By joining RE100, the fragrance and flavoring manufacturer from Holzminden has committed to completely obtaining its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The membership is a new component in a comprehensive strategy for climate protection and sustainability.
Symrise operates numerous production facilities for about 30,000 products as well as development centers, labs and offices in more than 40 countries around the world. The Group is one of the leading global providers of fragrance, flavoring and food ingredients, cosmetic active ingredients and raw materials as well as functional ingredients and solutions that enhance the sensory properties and nutrition of various products. Energy consumption in 2018 amounted to 5,413 terra joules. This is an amount that demands a greater responsibility for the environment. Symrise is aware of this and has invested strongly in its energy efficiency and renewable energies over the past few years. Last year, the Group began obtaining CO2 certificates of origin in Germany, therefore greening all the energy it bought. At this point, 98 percent of Symrise production sites have already been certified according to these sustainability criteria. Furthermore, 69 percent of the company’s manufacturing sites (in terms of production volume) are ISO 14001 certified – a globally accepted standard for environmental management systems.
Always one step ahead in sustainability
Symrise is now going one step further and joining a leading initiative of large companies to advance the use of renewable energies. “Symrise wants to exclusively use energy from renewable sources around the world by 2025 – that is our clear goal,” says Hans Holger Gliewe, Chief Sustainability Officer at Symrise. “We are setting an example through our membership in the RE100 initiative.”
RE100 is a global initiative with more than 190 large companies from different sectors, including furniture group Ikea, beverage manufacturer Carlsberg and insurer Swiss Re. All members must set a deadline by which they want to obtain 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources – with the limit here being 2050. The progress of the journey toward this goal must be documented in an annual report. A medium for this documentation is the global environmental reporting platform CDP. According to CDP, Symrise is already one of the most sustainable suppliers. The company also received the highest possible rating of “Leadership” in the categories of climate protection and forest conservation in 2018. Furthermore, the Holzminden-based Group publishes its sustainability performance in its yearly Corporate Report, which includes a Sustainability Record, according to the criteria of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
“Symrise has been completely transparent regarding its energy goals and performance since 2006. We were the first company in our sector and among the first 61 companies worldwide to fulfill the strict climate goals of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBT) in June 2017,” says Dr. Helmut Frieden, Corporate Sustainability Symrise AG. “But we are not stopping there, because programs to achieve eco-efficiency today have the highest priority in society. This is reflected in our current materiality analysis, in which we describe the strategic weighting of our sustainability goals through our company and its stakeholders.”