Festo_Sustainability-Report_2020

6. Resource and material efficiency 6. Resource and material efficiency 6.1 Packing Packaging is necessary to protect high-value products during their storage and transport. Finding the balance between sufficient pro- tection, limiting packaging costs and the environmental compati- bility of the packaging concept is no easy task. The continuous development and optimisation of our packaging concept is a chal- lenge for the areas concerned at Festo. Festo strives to achieve the highest possible proportion of packag- ing made from renewable materials. These include materials made of wood, paper, cardboard and corrugated cardboard. In 2020, this was just under 97 per cent for our largest distribution centre. In addition, we aim to limit the proportion of packaging in our ship- ping volume. This amounted to just under 16 per cent – also for Germany – in 2020. The values are likely to be in this order of mag- nitude internationally as well. Customer complaints received in individual cases about too much packaging material are unfortunately justified. Therefore, we try to find sustainable solutions whenever possible. The complaints are mostly due to an automatic packaging installation with limited standard sizes. Internally, our goal is to reuse packaging that has been received. We can measure this percentage in our plants in China – the reuse rate there is more than 80 per cent. 6.4 Consideration of applicable guidelines and laws The processes involved in product approvals are described in inter- nal guidelines. Festo must comply with applicable law so that the products are considered safe. There are different regulations and laws on product safety around the world to allow products to be placed on the market. This requires the respective certifications in the various regions.  GRI 102-11 , GRI 416-1 Statutory regulations that must be complied with are, for example, EU Directive 2011/65/EU (RoHS 2), EC Regulation 1907/2006 (REACH Regulation), the corresponding mandatory entries in the SCIP database, the requirements of the EC Packaging Directive 94/62/EC and the requirements of the EC Battery Directive 2006/66/EC. All regulations and directives aim to prevent prohib- ited ingredients being contained in a material at a concentration above the permitted limit. The limit values for the regulated ingredients vary from one regula- tion to another and are embedded in Festo’s internal guidelines. Festo’s products are labelled in accordance with legal require- ments with regard to their origin, composition and use. The corre- sponding label describes, for example, when a product was manu- factured and in which factory so that traceability is guaranteed. 6.2 Use of aluminium The environmental impact of primary aluminium is significantly higher than that of remelted secondary aluminium. Since 2019, we have been recording the proportion of secondary aluminium in our internationally procured aluminium volume in order to be able to identify positive or negative developments. The propor- tion of secondary aluminium increased by 3 per cent in 2020 compared to 2019, to a total of 72 per cent. With a 10 per cent higher procurement volume, the CO 2 footprint associated with aluminium production has therefore only increased by 2 per cent to around 44,800 tonnes. To ensure that this positive development can continue, in 2020 we began to test the alloys used at Festo for their producibility from secondary aluminium. 6.3 Scrap reduction in the plant The reduction of rejects in our manufacturing processes is an important quality management project. This also contributes directly to improving resource efficiency and reducing waste. In 2020, the number of parts to be scrapped was reduced by more than 15 per cent. Since there is no one-to-one relationship between rejects and the disposal fraction, the savings effect achieved can only be estimated. This amounted to well over 20 tonnes for the relevant fraction of aluminium with foreign adhe- sions. 54 55 Festo SE & Co. KG Sustainability Report 2020 Festo SE & Co. KG Sustainability Report 2020