Argentine community initiative wins 2006 ICI Sustainability Award

Citation

(2007), "Argentine community initiative wins 2006 ICI Sustainability Award", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 36 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.2007.12936dab.002

Argentine community initiative wins 2006 ICI Sustainability Award

Argentine community initiative wins 2006 ICI Sustainability Award

A programme to share environmental knowledge and sustainable production projects with a local community in Argentina has won the 2006 ICI Chairman's Leadership Award for Sustainability.

The annual award is part of a programme that recognises innovative and outstanding projects by ICI sites around the world in the categories of safety, health, environment, product stewardship and community involvement.

For over ten years, ICI's site at Palmira has used an extensive set of environment projects as the basis of the programme. The site has always used waste from the wine making industry as a raw material, but has gone further to integrate operations with other local industries by using waste materials from soft fruit growing as fuel; re-using waste to irrigate a eucalypt forest and as a soil improver for the vineyards; and providing additional fuel for the site boilers.

This knowledge was utilised as a practical educational resource for the local region and the site and a local school developed practical environmental activities to complement the school syllabus.

ICI Chief Executive John McAdam said: “These awards aim to reinforce the importance of sustainability across the ICI Group and to encourage everyone to participate in improving our performance.”

ICI Argentina was one of the four winners of the 2006 Chief Executive's Leadership Awards for Sustainability in the areas of safety, health, environment, product stewardship and community involvement (no 2006 award was made in the health category). Each was considered for the Chairman's award. A further award category, on Employee Practices, will be introduced in 2007.

The other winners of the 2006 Chief Executive's award were:

Safety: Quest International, USA

Quest's site at Owings Mills introduced a campaign “I Work Safely Because...” to enhance engagement in safety behaviour at the site, and to reinforce the impact on friends and families.

Environment: National Starch, Germany

Hamburg site has found a novel solution to an odour problem from the site, eliminating the offending drying stage of the process and selling the wet and dry products separately to local farmers. This has the added bonus of reducing energy and effluent treatment requirements, and plant utility costs.

Product Stewardship: ICI Paints, UK

Working with partners Carillion and Forum for the Future, ICI Paints has developed a streamlined life cycle analysis (SLCA) process which quickly identifies the main product impacts in all stages of the life cycle.