Sustainability

The most important aspect of all our policies relates to the well being of Saint-Gobain people.

We are continually developing and maintaining a positive health and safety culture that is applicable to our employees, contractors, customers and all other parties that come into contact with our operations.

Saint-Gobain’s approach to environment, health and safety is derived from three key documents. 

Principles of conduct and action

• actively promote the protection of the environment
• take particular care to adopt all measures necessary to ensure the best possible protection against health and safety risks in the workplace

Group EHS policy

• based on the respect for the individual and his or her environment.  It invites each Saint-Gobain employee to commit to reaching definite targets.

The EHS Charter

• on display at all Group sites, it aims to get all Saint-Gobain employees working towards three key objectives and to date has been translated into 30 languages:

      Zero work-related accidents
      Zero occupational illness
      Zero non-recovered waste

Our stringent standards have achieved a continuous reduction in accidents involving employees over the last 15 years. However, a zero accident rate is the target. A specific initiative to assist the attainment of this goal is The 20 Steps Audit, an in-depth integrated systems audit for Environment, Health and Safety issues, designed to ensure best practice approaches to EHS management. We have also adopted the 5S approach to workplace control, which enables all employees to become actively involved with Health and Safety within their own working environments.

Excellent health and safety performance is recognised in a number of ways.  The Health and Safety Diamonds were established to reward those demonstrating excellent health and safety performance, offering nominees the chance to highlight the business benefits of an accident-free workplace in front of an audience of senior management and health and safety professionals.  To be considered for a Diamond, nominees need to have been accident free for at least a year or demonstrate a continually decreasing accident rate over a three to five year period.  Saint-Gobain also have a number of members of the 'Millionaires' club, whereby sites have been lost time accident free for 5 years or for one million hours (or both).  The Group has 107 members of the club globally, of which five are from the UK and Ireland.

Our commitment is also evident in our international Environment, Health and Safety Day, which includes a range of activities designed to reinforce the importance of health and safety at all levels of the organisation.