• ISO 14001 international certification – which requires continuous review to identify all environmental risks and actual impacts;

• National and international regulations – which clearly identify priority areas and timelines for compliance. These directives often come from the European Union and address hazardous substances management in particular;

• Increasingly specific customer enquiries – for example about manufacturing processes and the material content of the products we make.

 

For over a decade, we progressively worked through an ISO 14001 roadmap. This first targeted main production sites. It then addressed personalization centers including our biggest non-manufacturing facilities at Meudon and La Ciotat in France. Today, these accommodate 1,000 and 800 people respectively.

In 2010, we were awarded an additional ISO 14001 certificate at Meudon. This brought our total to 22 certified sites, including joint ventures. Together, these cover 78% of all Gemalto employees and 94% of those working at our 27 main sites (manufacturing and headquarters).

All of these worldwide sites – including five in Asia and three in Latin America – are audited once or twice a year by ISO 14001-accredited companies. They assess the effectiveness of our EMS by reviewing its risk and impact analysis, plans and results versus objectives. External auditors also evaluate our monitoring of legal requirements and response to recent changes in the regulations.
Many sites are also certified through national schemes, for example Montgomeryville, US (“KEMA”), and our plant at Cuernavaca, Mexico (“Clean Industry”).

We use site action plans to address the main potential environmental risks and actual impacts. These relate to consumption (e.g. of energy, water, paper and manufacturing materials) and waste management. Another important area is printing technology – especially when it involves laminated products, solvents and Volatile Organic Compound (VoC) emissions.

Gemalto has also accelerated efforts to measure its carbon footprint. This anticipates new laws in several countries (for more detail, see the Focus article on our carbon footprint program on page 36).