Johnson Matthey is committed to managing its activities throughout the group so as to provide the highest level of protection to the environment and to safeguard the health and safety of its employees, customers and the community.

The company's Environment and Health and Safety (EHS) policies provide the guiding principles that ensure high standards are achieved at all sites around the world and afford a means of promoting continuous improvement based on careful risk assessment and comprehensive EHS management systems. These policies are formally reviewed at regular intervals and during the year a major update commenced with the assistance of external consultants. This work will give greater emphasis to formal management systems, which bring a systematic improvement in performance. Employee information and training requirements and the designation of corporate targets and performance measures for the businesses have also been revised. Corporate policies provide a framework for all Johnson Matthey businesses that are required to formulate site specific policies to meet local requirements. During the year these issues were reviewed at Johnson Matthey's International EHS conference, held biennially, which brings together general management and senior EHS professionals from across the group.

Board responsibility for EHS rests with the Group Managing Director who chairs the Environment, Health and Safety Committee (EHSC), a sub-committee of the board. The EHSC meets every two months to review and monitor EHS performance and consider key policy and operational issues. The division directors of Johnson Matthey's manufacturing operations are members of the committee together with the director of EHS. In addition the board undertakes a formal review of EHS performance annually. To ensure effective monitoring of performance, health and safety data is compiled monthly for consideration by the EHSC and general management. Environmental and resource efficiency information for the group is monitored and analysed annually.

EHS compliance audits are an integral part of Johnson Matthey's corporate EHS management system. During the year 24 in-depth EHS audits were completed across our operations in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Formal exit interviews with local site management are a feature of the audits and audit reports are reviewed by the EHSC with routine follow up on any outstanding issues. During the year further site visits were made to oversee health surveillance programmes by the Group Occupational Physician. A feature of the year has been the high level of capital investment in our existing businesses. This has led to many environmental improvements and has presented an opportunity to design and operate processes that are inherently safer and resource efficient. Resource efficiency is a discipline that is second nature to managers in the businesses who are charged with the responsibility of handling materials and products of high intrinsic value, many of which are recyclable.

Environment Policy

• Ensure that site operations meet legal and company
  requirements.
• Design and manufacture products to optimise their
  environmental performance.
• Eliminate all polluting releases from operations. Where
  elimination is not presently achievable, the intermediate goal
  is reduction.
• Promote high standards of energy management.
• Undertake comprehensive waste management programmes
  based on the following hierarchy of options - prevent,
  minimise, re-use, recycle and safely dispose.
• Minimise the impacts of past, present and future operations
  through effective planning and adequate provision of resources.
• Ensure that operations cause minimal visual impact or nuisance
  to the public.

Health and Safety Policy

• Ensure that all locations meet all legal and company health
  and safety requirements.
• Manufacture current products in a manner which ensures
  a safe working environment through each phase of the
  production process.
• Strive toward an end goal of eliminating unsafe practices
  at all locations.
• Promote high standards of safety awareness through employee
  involvement and management commitment at each location.
• Operate processes at all times to minimise danger to the
  surrounding community.
• Provide immediate and effective response in event
  of accidents and emergencies.

Case Studies

Climate Change Levy
In the UK Johnson Matthey has signed negotiated agreements with the government through the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) and the British Ceramic Federation committing to a reduction in specific energy use by up to 22% of 1998 levels by 2010. In return our UK manufacturing operations have secured an 80% reduction of the Climate Change Levy (the Levy).

Combined Heat & Power
As a major part of Johnson Matthey's energy efficiency programme Combined Heat & Power (CHP) plants have been installed at our Royston and Brimsdown sites with a total electrical capacity of 10Mw. These units, powered by natural gas, produce electricity, hot water and steam at over 85% efficiency. This form of distributed power generation compares favourably with centralised generation supplied through the national grid at an efficiency of around 35%, thus reducing cost and emissions to the environment. The introduction of CHP will provide an important contribution to reaching our UK energy reduction targets. The initiative will be supplemented by other energy efficiency measures, which seek to mitigate the effects of the Levy and the general increase in energy costs.

Natural gas powered Combined Heat & Power unit at Johnson Matthey’s Royston, UK site Further sites in Australia and Argentina are in the final stages of assessment prior to certification.

ISO 14001
ISO 14001 is an internationally recognised standard for environmental management, which is verifiable through independent auditors and incorporates continual improvement and employee involvement as key characteristics of the system. During the year Johnson Matthey's autocatalyst plants in Queretaro, Mexico and Germiston, South Africa became the latest sites to successfully achieve ISO 14001 certification. To date 24% of our employees work in plants that have achieved ISO 14001.

New Autocatalyst Facility Royston
This year saw the opening of our £10 million autocatalyst facility at our Royston site, which will see the annual production of 3.5 million automotive catalysts capable of meeting the strictest vehicle emission limits. The plant has been designed with safety, efficiency and environmental concerns in mind. The plant eliminates solid and liquid wastes and energy use is minimised. The efficiency of continuous drying ovens has doubled over previous designs through the introduction of heat exchangers, which extract waste heat from the exhaust stream to pre-heat incoming air. Gaseous emissions from the plant pass through a selective catalytic reduction system produced by Johnson Matthey's Environmental Products business in the US which eliminates NOx. The catalyst works in a similar way to a catalytic converter on a car by reducing NOx to nitrogen and water. The plant uses an intelligent process control system that constantly checks the operation of the manufacturing process. Robotic component handling technology has been used to design out repetitive manual handling tasks.

Training
Johnson Matthey's Noble Metals facility in West Whiteland has introduced interactive computer based training systems to improve employee health and safety awareness in the workplace as a complement to conventional methods. The courses are modular and allow tailoring to meet the specific needs of the employee. The technique has been well received and employees can work through the courses at their own pace leading to higher retention than conventional training methods. Similar interactive training systems are being adopted by other Johnson Matthey facilities.