Report

Contact Information

Global Nalco Locations
Local Sales Offices
Energy Services Contacts

Nalco Company
WPS Headquarters
1601 W. Diehl Road
Naperville, IL 60563-1198
630-305-1000 Phone
630-305-2900 Fax

Nalco Energy Services Headquarters
7705 Highway 90-A
Sugar Land, TX 77478
281-263-7000 Phone

Environmental Sustainability

A sharp 19 percent increase in production dramatically affected some of our environmental results, but we achieved our 2012 energy reduction goal two years early.

While we strive to be efficient in our use of natural resources, the environmental impacts produced by our operations are strongly tied to both our total production and the mix of specific chemistries we must produce to meet customer needs. Our success in providing our sustainability solutions to customers helped them improve their operations and reduce their water and energy use. However, it also produced strong surges in our sales and production that, as we predicted in our 2009 Report, reversed very positive prior trends.

Nalco and our CEO, Erik Fyrwald, remain committed to the United Nations Global Compact and CEO Water Mandate goals including protecting the environment and advancing sustainable water use policies and practices. An important proof point of that commitment is the transparency demonstrated by this report of our key environmental measurements and some of the steps we are taking to improve our performance.

Water and Wastewater

As economies around the world emerged from the global recession in 2010, we expected that the related growth in our business would drive an increase in our water use and subsequent wastewater releases. Unfortunately the mix of products we supplied to customers combined with record sales to push our water use up even faster than production. Total water withdrawals (EN8) increased nearly 26 percent over the prior year and were up 6 percent over the past five years. Treated wastewater releases from our facilities (EN21) were up 28 percent from 2009 and increased slightly over 8 percent since 2006.

The positive environmental, social, and economic impact our customers have achieved with our technology solutions dwarfs the impact of our own facilities. One of our technologies alone, 3D TRASAR cooling water automation, saved more than 329 million cubic meters (87 billion gallons) of water in 2010. That is more than 60 times our total water use of 4.9 million cubic meters.

In addition, we are constantly evaluating opportunities to reduce our water use. For example:

Personnel at our plant near Chicago in the United States evaluated various aspects of its most water-intensive production process and identified opportunities to reduce required rinsing and flushing of equipment, substantially reducing water use and saving more than 41,000 cubic meters (11 million gallons) of water per year.
A water reuse project at our plant in Suzhou, China cut water use by nearly 4,500 cubic meters (1.2 million gallons) per year.
Maintenance and process changes, combined with efforts to identify and repair water and steam leaks at our facilities, reduced both water and energy use.
Detection and repair of a water leak in the firefighting water system at our plant in Oklahoma eliminated 50,000 gallons per month of water loss.

To further increase our transparency, for the first time we are reporting the ultimate destination of the treated wastewater released by our manufacturing sites and other facilities. The vast majority (71 percent) is sent to off-site facilities for further treatment before it is released to the environment. Most of the balance is treated by the Nalco facility before being released to local surface water.

Energy

The success of many energy-saving projects implemented in recent years at our facilities is reflected in our energy use reporting. Energy use increased at a much lower rate (5.2 percent) than production (19 percent). Efficiency efforts yielded strong results as well with a substantial decrease (11.4 percent) in total energy used per metric ton produced despite our sizable production increase.

Throughout 2010, Nalco plants and major facilities identified and implemented more than 160 energy reduction actions around the globe.

Simpler activities involved increasing employee awareness and changing operating and maintenance procedures to more effectively utilize energy at plants in Australia, Italy and Colombia.
Major lighting upgrades occurred in the United States, Australia and Venezuela.
Process equipment and system improvements in the United States, Singapore, Canada, China and Brazil included upgrading to energy efficient air compressors and pumps, building energy efficiencies, heating upgrades, increased insulation and steam trap upgrades.

These collective 2010 energy reduction efforts contributed an estimated annual energy use reduction of more than 111,000 gigajoules. (EN5)

Despite our increase in energy use we continued to hold total use below our stated goal of a global 10 percent reduction from 2007 levels by the end of 2012. However, continued strong growth in our business and changing product mix based on customer demand will tend to increase our energy use. We continue to identify additional opportunities for efficiency and reductions to limit the impacts of growing production.

Air

Nalco was one of more than 3,000 companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2010. CDP collects greenhouse gas emissions information and makes it available to more than 500 institutional investors and 60 purchasing organizations including Wal-Mart, PepsiCo and Dell. This data is made available for integration into local government, business and policy decision making. For more information visit the Carbon Disclosure Project website

Our energy efficiency successes also helped moderate our greenhouse gas (GHG) and other air emissions in 2010. Total GHG emissions (EN 16) tracked very close to energy use, increasing only 5.7 percent compared to our 19 percent rise in production. NO_x emissions (oxides of nitrogen) rose 5.4 percent while SO_x emissions (oxides of sulfur) increased 17.9 percent from the previous year (EN20).

Efforts to reduce energy consumption by Nalco plants and major facilities have a favorable impact on associated GHG emissions. For example the Nalco manufacturing plant in Suzano, Brazil installed an ultra-filter membrane system that reduces the energy needed to manufacture our colloidal silica products. When compared to the older, less energy-efficient evaporation process, this change consumes less natural gas and requires less process cycle time, resulting in a reduction of 2,275 tons of CO₂ emissions compared to 2008.

Despite a 19 percent increase in global production from 2009 and the added energy demand, our global greenhouse gas intensity was reduced more than 11 percent, from 0.159 metric tons of GHG CO₂-e per metric ton produced in 2009 to 0.141 in 2010 (EN 18). NO_x emission intensity was also reduced, declining from 7.2 tons per 100,000 tons of production to 6.3 in 2010. SO_x emission intensity remained flat for the third year in a row at 0.6 tons per 100,000 tons produced.

Waste Reduction

Global waste generation (EN22) also increased (8.4 percent) but at a slower pace than our production (19 percent). The five-year trend for waste generation was positive, with a 2.8 percent reduction in total waste since 2006. The amount of waste generated compared to production also improved, down more than 8 percent from .0227 metric tons of waste to metric ton produced in 2009 to .0207 in 2010.

Process improvement teams at our largest manufacturing site, in Garyville La., identified several waste reduction opportunities, winning an Environmental Leader Program award from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. One change allowed 900,000 pounds of a major raw material to be reclaimed annually and a second change cut used waste oil disposal by 225,000 pounds. Changes in the plant’s wastewater system reduced the amount of nitrate compounds being released into the Mississippi River. Excess nitrogen in the river water causes hypoxia (oxygen depleted zones) in the Gulf of Mexico, harming sea life and impacting commercial fishing.

Global Fines and Penalties

We track and report both the number and amount paid (in U.S. dollars) for safety, health and environmental fines and penalties across our global organization. This figure also includes penalties related to product registration violations and transportation incidents.

EN28	# of Incidents	Amount US$
2006	8	$56,837
2006	13	$145,430
2007	15	$921,717
2008	3	$23,000
2009	3	$20,660

More details of our environmental performance are available in the Detailed Appendix to our 2010 Sustainability Report.