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Soil, Water, Air - BASF and the Environment

Environmental protection only becomes an issue for BASF – as for most industrial companies – in the 1960s. Since then, it has been consistently investing in environmental protection and extending its underlying concept.

Biological Purification

Initially, BASF dumps its untreated wastewater into the river Rhine. Mechanical cleaning devices are sufficient until the 1960s. In 1974, the commissioning of the wastewater treatment plant marks a turning point. The core of the plant is biological purification: Billions of bacteria transform polluting agents into sewage sludge, carbon dioxide and water. The affiliated sewage sludge incinerator creates steam used to generate electricity and stored in the district heating network.

Smoking Chimneys? Clean Air?

For a long time, smoking chimneys are synonymous with economic growth. After only sporadic measures adopted during the early 20^th century, BASF has steped up action to ensure systematic air pollution control since the 1960s. For example, an air measuring vehicle has served as a mobile measuring station at the Ludwigshafen site since 1965. The “driving sniffer” has been providing collected data to the new air and noise monitoring center since 1972. It is the forerunner of the environmental monitoring center, established in 1989.

Powerhouses in the Energy Verbund

For BASF, energy efficiency is the key to combining climate protection, conservation of resources and competitive economic advantages. Its Energy Verbund as well as combined heat and power (CHP) plants are essential in this respect. Within the Energy Verbund, waste heat from production processes is captured to be used as energy in other production plants. This principle was first applied at the Ludwigshafen site as early as 1910. In addition, BASF has been using combined heat and power (CHP) plants to generate both electricity and steam since 1997.

Water Flea Colleague

Product stewardship – that sounds very modern. However, this concept dates back to approaches used by BASF since 1914 when it founds the industrial toxicology examination center. It is the first of its kind in the German chemical industry. Here, BASF tests its products for their potential adverse health effects long before it becomes legally required. BASF has been examining the environmental impact of its products, processes, and emissions since the 1960s. It bundles its efforts in this area in 1991 with the establishment of a central ecology laboratory. Here, water fleas and other microorganisms are used to assess the environmental impacts of individual substances.

Energy from Waste

The basic principles of BASF’s disposal concept are avoiding, reducing, and recycling. What remains as waste is disposed of thermally, i.e. incinerated. The early beginnings date back to the 1920s. In 1960, BASF commissions its own residue combustion plant in Ludwigshafen which is equipped with the patented rotary kiln technology only four years later. The heat generated by way of incineration is fed into the company's steam and power networks still today.

Regarding industrialization, environmental damage is still considered a necessary evil in the first half of the 20^th century. This view is not reconsidered in Europe and North America until the 1960s when industry-related environmental damage becomes too obvious.

BASF reacts with an array of measures. In 1968, it begins reporting emission inventories long before such records are required. In 1974, the BASF wastewater treatment plant goes into operation as the largest of its kind in Europe.

BASF consistently develops these early measures for remedial environmental protection in the following years. In addition, there is an increased focus on precautionary environmental protection measures since the 1990s to avoid environmental problems up front. For this purpose, measures are already put in place during the development of new processes and products including eco-efficiency analysis, introduced by BASF in 1996.

BASF’s Verbund principle also contributes to preventive measures for environmental protection by allowing the by-product of an operation to be used very efficiently as a primary product for another operation or allowing excess reaction heat to be used in the neighboring factory as an energy source. In this way, resources are used efficiently while emissions and waste are significantly reduced.

BASF products are also helping to reduce pollution and conserve resources today. Neopor, a heat insulator developed in 1998, is one example among many.