Over the last couple of years significant improvements in relation to environmental management and performance have been achieved. In 1998 we have worked on consolidating the initiatives taken in previous years. Further integration of environmental issues into our daily work has also been done in research and development, and in purchasing. In the production area, our enzyme site in Copenhagen gained the environmental ISO 14001 certification. We have developed new site-based eco-productivity indices that relate consumption of water and energy to the actual amount of product made in our fermention and recovery processes. As demon-strated by these new indicators we have made progress in "producing more for less".

International network
Our international network of environmental managers who meet annually was convened this year in August at our two sites in North Carolina. The network serves as an important basis for the sharing of best practices and the development of global standards. The new site-based eco-productivity index was an important item on the agenda. It was agreed that site-based EPIs would for 1998 be calculated for sites with fermentation and recovery, i.e. basic production. See "Monitoring resource efficiency".

Status of 1998-2002 target: Integrate environmental issues into our management systems. Environmental issues will be audited.

Our enzyme factory in Copenhagen gained ISO 14001 certification in September 1998. It is the first of our Enzyme Business sites to implement a certified environmental management system. The benefits of the system are already appreciable in everyday operations. It has for example become easier for us to monitor compliance with the environmental requirements set by the authorities and we now have a more systematic approach to achieving continuous improvement in our performance. Since environmental improvements are often synonymous with process optimization, we expect to see improved productivity and resource savings in future. Our other Enzyme Business sites are now working towards gaining ISO 14001 certification by the end of the year 2000.

ICC Charter rating
As in the two preceding years, we have asked SustainAbility to rate our progress against the ICC Charter for Sustainable Development using a five-point rating scheme. The rating criteria that have been applied for the past two years originate from the Responsible Care programme. The criteria have now been redefined to encompass continuous improvement and the rating for 1997 has been amended accordingly.

The sites that are part of our environmental network are benchmarking their performance annually against the 16 principles of the charter in order to look for improvement opportunities.