Solvay receives recognition on biodiversity commitments

Solvay’s commitment on biodiversity has been approved by the Act4Nature International coalition, an initiative that encourages corporate action for the protection, enhancement and restoration of biodiversity. The recognition was given to a select group of 30 companies.   

Act4Nature International’s endorsement is due to Solvay’s commitment to setting bold objectives to solve key environmental and societal challenges - and biodiversity in particular - through science and innovation. Its sustainability roadmap ‘Solvay One Planet’, which is inspired by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, includes ten measurable commitments to be achieved by 2030. As part of the Climate pillar of Solvay One Planet, the Group is now committed to reducing its pressures on biodiversity by 30% in areas such as climate, terrestrial acidification, water eutrophication and marine ecotoxicity.

Solvay CEO Ilham Kadri commented: “Reducing the impact of our business on nature is an urgent necessity. Our objective is to leave our children a better world than the one we live in today. We are addressing our impact throughout the value chain, from raw materials to production, including on biodiversity. This ranges from the technologies we use in our plants to the solutions we bring to our clients to diminish their environmental impact and from the investment choices we make to the well-being of our employees and the communities we are part of. ”  

Solvay started looking at its biodiversity impacts on a local scale in 2018 with a screening of all its sites and their potential impact on protected areas. This led to working with local administrations in charge of the protected areas to track and analyze the actions to carry out in order to alleviate those impacts. Over the past couple of years, Solvay has stepped up its global commitments as well, as embodied in the Solvay One Planet program. 

Solvay placed itself one step ahead by including a quantified reduction of the main pressures on biodiversity in its global sustainability objectives. There are about fifteen different pressures, each one individually quantifiable. Instead of assessing its impact on biodiversity itself (which is the objective of international metrics), Solvay is set on working on the causes of that impact about which something can be done. 

“Based on the science based environmental profiles of our products, looking at their lifecycle from cradle to gate, we were able to identify the pressures on which our portfolio has the greatest impact,” explains Pascal Chalvon Demersay, Chief Sustainability Officer at Solvay . “There are four of them: climate change, freshwater eutrophication, marine ecotoxicity and soil acidification. Ninety percent of our biodiversity impacts are related to one of these.”

Along with the fight against global warming, the preservation of biodiversity is the most important environmental challenge of the 21st century. The stakes are huge: at the current rate, half of all living species could have disappeared a century from now. The COVID-19 pandemic is a strong reminder that 70% of all viruses on the planet come from animals and are disseminated when ecosystems are destabilized. Companies like Solvay are becoming aware of the challenge of biodiversity preservation and the role they can play in tackling it.

Solvay is a science company whose technologies bring benefits to many aspects of daily life. With more than 24,100 employees in 64 countries, Solvay bonds people, ideas and elements to reinvent progress. The Group seeks to create sustainable shared value for all, notably through its Solvay One Planet plan crafted around three pillars: protecting the climate, preserving resources and fostering  better life. The Group’s innovative solutions contribute to safer, cleaner, and more sustainable products found in homes, food and consumer goods, planes, cars, batteries, smart devices, health care applications, water and air purification systems. Founded in 1863, Solvay today ranks among the world’s top three companies for the vast majority of its activities and delivered net sales of €10.2 billion in 2019. Solvay is listed on Euronext Brussels (SOLB) and Paris and in the United States, where its shares (SOLVY) are traded through a Level I ADR program. Learn more at www.solvay.com.