GPCA report highlights industry’s environmental and safety performance
GPCA has released its 2016 Responsible Care Performance Metrics Report highlighting the Arabian Gulf industry’s health, safety and environmental performance.
‘Setting standards through transparency’ brings together the collective environment, health and safety performance data of the GCC chemical and petrochemical industry for 2013-2016. The data is collected in accordance with ICCA’s Global Harmonized Process Safety Metrics and covers 21 individual metrics with a data reporting level of 97%.
The report highlights the continued reduction of the Total Reportable Incident Rate (TRIR) for accidents at member facilities – down from 0.275 per 200,000 man hours worked in 2013 to 0.120 in 2016. While this is still below the American Chemistry Council’s benchmark industry figure, eight of the 36 member companies reported zero accidents for 2016. Progress has also been made on process safety incidents, with Tier 1 incidents declining from some 54 in 2014 and 2015 to just 32 in 2016.
Emissions and discharges per ton of production have decreased across a wide range of metrics, including non-hazardous and hazardous waste, waste water, chemical oxygen demand, NOx and SOx as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon dioxide intensity per ton of production also saw a slight decline in 2015 and 2016 over the previous two years.
There is also a focus on women in this year’s report, with the number of women entering the industry reported as constantly growing. There is broad consensus that sustained efforts must be made to retain and bolster the participation of women in the chemical and petrochemicals industry to create a more inclusive and diverse workforce.
The report, which follows a GPCA Board resolution to increase transparency, states that members continue to work hard in all areas of environmental management, and develop strategies to reduce environmental footprint through effective RC management systems.