Health and Safety
The chemicals and plastics industry is a highly complex ecosystem, producing a wide variety of products from diverse chemical building blocs in complex, energy-intensive production sites. Chemical operations involve highly flammable, toxic and hazardous substances that could pose a significant risk to Borealis' employees and neighbors, if not handled correctly. Ensuring health and safety for all stakeholders is Borealis' top priority, always keeping in mind one mantra: "If we can't do it safely, we don't do it at all".
Our Ambition
Borealis' Sustainability focus area Health and Safety encompasses three dimensions: Occupational Health & Safety, Process Safety and Product Safety. The first two are represented in Borealis' Goal Zero Programme, which aims to eliminate all accidents and incidents, ensuring no one gets hurt while working at Borealis - by anticipating and mitigating risks and continuously educating employees and leaders to do better.
We are committed to minimising the risk to people and the environment posed by the use of chemicals in products throughout their whole lifecyle and follow a responsible and proactive hazardous chemicals strategy, built on regulatory compliance in all countries we operate in and the implementation of an assessment system that allows us to anticipate growing consumer concerns about specific chemicals used in processes and products. Borealis is committed to growing its circular solutions business, which is why our product safety activities also encompass ensuring that mechanically recycled post-consumer waste is free from hazardous substances that endanger consumers or hinder the recyclability of the product.
The Borealis' Responsible Care Policy forms the foundation of our Health & Safety approach and contains the concrete measures and guidelines we follow day by day. To stay accountable, we set ourselves the following all-time Health and Safety targets:
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0
work-related incidents or accidents
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0
harmful substances in our products according to REACH*
*Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH)
Borealis Responsible Care Policy
Borealis has committed itself to advancing sustainable development, assessing the positive and negative consequences of its activities on People, Planet and Profit and taking responsible decisions. The guiding principles for implementing standards on occupational health and safety, energy and environmental management, process safety and product stewardship are set in the Responsible Care Policy.
Responsible Care®Our Achievements in 2023
Our Approach
We learn from experience and constantly improve our measures to ensure health and safety for our employees, our customers and the communities we operate in.
- Proactive accident prevention by developing risk management tools, implementing checks and controls, undertaking awareness campaigns and health and safety trainings and regular audits for both employees and contractors.
- We ensure detailed chemical exposure monitoring, physical examinations and periodic screenings and evaluations for employees, and offers targeted initiatives to ensure employee health and well-being, such as providing physical and mental health services and vaccinations to employees.
- We implemented TRI per million working hours as Borealis Group Scorecard KPI.
- Our Product Stewardship Council keeps and regularly updates a Banned Substances List of more than 250 substances and substance groups that the Group will not use, potential endocrine disruptors, phthalates and brominated flame retardants and runs voluntary substitution projects.
- All Borealis products are assessed for their health, safety and environmental (HSE) impact throughout their life cycle, from raw material sourcing to end of life, informing the Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and Product Safety Information Sheets available for all our products.
- We establish an on-going dialogue with the communities we operate in and conduct regular assessments of potential social and environmental impact on the communities.
- Detailed information on Borealis' Health and Safety Performance can be found in our Annual Report.
