Environmental protection at ArcelorMittal Gent

 

An environmental protection system is that part of an organization that aims to control the environmental effects of its activities, products and services and to constantly improve the environmental performances.


Why an environmental protection system?

Numerous graphs concerning environmentally-relevant parameters demonstrate that ArcelorMittal Gent has already achieved excellent environmental performances in the past. That is all well and good, but it also means that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Realising the residual potential for ecological improvements is becoming ever more difficult, in both technological and financial terms. Moreover, regional, national and European environmental standards and obligations are steadily being made more stringent. The government also likes to see companies take extra steps on their own initiative, rather than merely observe the applicable environmental standards and regulations. Our customers, too, are imposing ever-stricter requirements in the area of environmental protection. Taken together, all of these trends prompted us to introduce a formal environmental protection system at the end of the 1990s.  Today, any organization that does not have a formal environmental protection system will find it difficult to make serious progress on the environmental level.



How does our environmental protection system work?


At the basis of our environmental protection system lies a thorough knowledge of the environmental aspects and risks which are intrinsic to our activities, products and services. By establishing guidelines wherever necessary in the form of procedures and work instructions, by sensitising, informing and effectively training our fellow workers, we gain control of the activities on the environmental level. If an environmental incident has already occurred - something which, in a company like ours, is almost unavoidable - we use this occasion as an opportunity to draw lessons from it and to take steps so that such an incident no longer re-occurs in the future. At ArcelorMittal Gent, extensive “involvement” of the fellow workers constitutes the key to success in the area of environmental protection.



ISO 14001 certificate

Since many of our customers require it, but also and above all in order to more visibly demonstrate our efforts in the environmental area to all interested outside parties, we had our environmental protection system certified according to the international standard ISO 14001.

An ISO 14001 certificate has a validity period of 3 years.  At regular intervals, a competent outside organization performs interim follow-up audits in order to determine whether the system is still functioning properly and whether continuous improvement in the area of environmental protection can be substantiated.


At the end of 2010 ArcelorMittal Gent renewed this certificate for a period of 3 years.

> You can consult the certificate here.



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