AGC Sustainability Report 2020

The European AGC Group’s Sustainability Report 2020 is now available online. It presents the company’s environmental performance in the Building & Industrial Glass Division and Automotive Division. AGC Glass Europe, which also includes AGC Interpane, is consistently committed to sustainable production processes and environmentally friendly products and services. Thanks to the “Cradle to Cradle” certifications of products that have already been carried out for ten years, the company is the pioneer for sustainability in the glass industry.

The most important results in the environmental report:

• Energy recovery and power generation: AGC began installing PV modules and heat recovery systems in 2009. Electricity production from recovered and self-generated energy increased steadily to around 30,000 MWh in 2019.
• CO2 and dust: Direct CO2 emissions per tonne of glass sold have been reduced by 14% since 2002. Specific dust emissions have fallen by around 67% since 1999.
  Water: From 1998 to 2019, water consumption was reduced by 73% on a comparable basis.
• Solid waste: The Group currently produces around 252,000 tons of solid waste each year, 97% of which is recycled or recovered on site by suppliers and contractors.
• Transport: 64% of all raw materials are transported by ship or train, which reduces the number of truck transports required by up to 51,500 trips per year. In 2019, around 40,000 tons of glass end products were transported multimodally (rail/truck), which reduced the number of trucks by around 2,000 vehicles per year.
• Packaging: Modern glass packaging is reusable. AGC Glass Europe has a very high reuse rate in this area. In Belgium, 98 percent of packaging is reused.
• Recycling: AGC Glass Europe recycles around 1,000,000 tons of cullet per year, saving around 1,150,000 tons of raw material and 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

Ecological footprint

AGC takes a holistic approach to comprehensively assessing its own “ecological footprint”: life cycle analysis, carbon footprinting and cradle-to-cradle certification of products. In 2019, AGC received certification for the Pyrobel fire-resistant glass, and the certificates (in the third C2C version) for float glass, magnetron-coated glass and ornamental glass were extended by two years. In May 2020, Stratobel laminated safety glass was awarded the silver Cradle to Cradle certificate, making it the first product of its kind in the world to receive this certification.

The sustainability report is available online at
www.agc-glass.eu/en/sustainability.