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Inside Valeo

Reducing our carbon footprint

Long committed to environmental protection, Valeo has passed a milestone with its carbon footprint audit.

To help protect the environment, many Valeo sites, such as this one at CLS Angers in France, have set up waste sorting and recycling areas

For a company to reduce its greenhouse gas levels and fight global warming effectively, it first needs to quantify precisely the emissions generated directly and indirectly by its activities and products. Valeo has been measuring its direct emissions for some years, but last year decided to go a step further by measuring its overall carbon footprint.

Jean-François Marchand, the Group's Risk, Insurance and Environment Director, explains: "A carbon footprint comprises not only direct emissions but indirect ones too – those generated by manufacturing the raw materials and components we buy, and all the travelling we do within the Group, including employee commuting, business travel, and the transportation of our products. An initial assessment was carried out last year with the help of our sites, who answered a questionnaires for us." As a result the Group's 2009 carbon footprint was estimated at approximately 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. The study revealed the considerable impact of raw materials, which accounted for nearly 80% of Valeo's total direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, with metals alone accounting for 54%.

Site electricity consumption accounted for nearly 10%, with the remaining 10% coming from logistics, personnel transportation and fossil fuel combustion in the industrial plants. "We’re going to improve the indicators for 2010 so as to fine-tune our carbon footprint audit. We then intend to do what is needed to reduce it efficiently," says Jean-François