BASF wins Excellence Award at Sri Lanka’s Geo Responsibility Awards 2012

BASF Lanka Ltd. has won an Excellence Award in the Environmental System Compliance Category at Sri Lanka’s Geo Responsibility Awards 2012.

Dubbed as Asia’s first carbon neutral awards, the award is in recognition for BASF’s performance and commitment towards managing the environment in a responsible manner.  

Nalin Wattegama, Assistant Manager, Warehouse, accepted the award on behalf of BASF Lanka from S.K.Lenaduwa, Deputy Director, Provincial Environmental Authority, North Western in the presence of Chief Guest, Patali Champika Ranawaka, Minister for Power and Energy, Government of Sri Lanka.

 “As the world’s leading chemical company, BASF follows the best environmental practices in alignment with our corporate purpose – ‘we create chemistry for a sustainable future’. The award stands in testimony to BASF’s commitment to sustainable development,” said I S Ragavan, Managing Director of BASF Lanka Ltd.

BASF has also been a winner of Sri Lanka’s prestigious National Safety Awards for ten consecutive years since 2001.  This respectable record reflects BASF has been leading and implementing safety rules, procedures while monitoring and improving safety excellence at its sites and workplaces through the years. In 2011, BASF Lanka was presented the Silver Award under the “Hazardous Waste Management” Category.

A steering committee was formed to assess the participants’ answers in a comprehensive questionnaire through several rounds of site inspections, followed by interviews with senior leaders of the participating companies to evaluate management commitment toward environmental protection and future initiatives. The steering committee consisted of top environmental professionals from the Ministry of Industries, Central Environmental Authority, Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, Industrial Technology Institute, National Cleaner Production Centre and the University of Moratuwa.

The names of the winning companies were announced during the centenary celebrations of Holcim excellence by Geocycle, which offers professional and environmental-friendly waste disposal solutions to the industry. Through the awards, Geocycle aims to appreciate, motivate and recognize their customers and the industry to take more green initiatives.

BASF has had an association with Sri Lanka for more than 80 years now. With 60 employees at the end of 2011, an agrochemicals processing unit and a state-of-the-art warehousing complex at Sapugaskande, BASF Lanka has active presence in the crop protection, performance products, chemicals and plastics segment. The site is ISO 9001 and 14001 certified, which confirms to international Environmental, Health, Safety and Security standards.

BASF is the world’s leading chemical company: The Chemical Company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products and crop protection products to oil and gas. We combine economic success, social responsibility and environmental protection. Through science and innovation we enable our customers in almost all industries to meet the current and future needs of society. Our products and system solutions contribute to conserving resources, ensuring healthy food and nutrition and helping to improve the quality of life. We have summed up this contribution in our corporate purpose: We create chemistry for a sustainable future. BASF posted sales of about €73.5 billion in 2011 and had more than 111,000 employees as of the end of the year. BASF shares are traded on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt (BAS), London (BFA) and Zurich (AN).