Climate and emissions
Emissions of greenhouse gases are one of the most important environmental aspects for Ragn-Sells to consider in terms of our impact on climate change. We are committed to substantially reducing our emissions within the coming years to reach our ambition of being climate positive by 2030.
Ragn-Sells negative environmental impact mainly derives from emissions from landfills, transport, and treatment plants. We continuously work on limiting our negative environmental impact. This includes handling, monitoring, and limiting emissions to air, land, and water, developing transport logistics, switching to renewable fuels, and performing final coverage on landfills.
These are our actions to reach a climate positive business in 2030:
- Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions: We will reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from all Ragn-Sells operations in absolute terms by working with our partners, suppliers, and customers around the world. Where possible, we aim to eliminate them. There will be a specific challenge with our contractors and securing minimum leakage from our landfills.
- Promote and develop circular loops: Always prefer recirculated resources in our procurement process and develop solutions that increase recirculation of resources. No debts or hindrances should be pushed to future generations and resources should be detoxified before circulation. 50% of the carbon emitted in the world relates to the lack of resource circularity.
- Storing carbon in land and invent solutions that reduces carbon emissions by using carbon capture: We will explore and improve ways to store carbon through our landfills and how we can best support agricultural practices. We will develop our landfills to become material banks for the future and sites for carbon storage.
- Partnering with others: To support the transformation of society into a circular economy requires collaboration with others and a focus on developing cross-industry symbioses. The much-needed change will only come if we work together, share knowledge and cocreate solutions.
- Taking actions together: We will lead by example and engage with others to advocate for policy changes and inspire policymakers to correct action to achieve a low-carbon society.
- Transparency: We will be transparent about our progress. We will only achieve our climate positive ambition when we have achieved net zero GHG emissions, supported by strong external engagement and advocacy. Detailed action plans for continuous progress are developed by each business unit in their respective business plans.
Climate benefit of material recycling
Our conviction is that waste is a valuable resource. By material recycling, circular solutions, innovations, and the right regulations, we can reduce our own as well as our customers’ use of virgin materials and limit the emissions of greenhouse gases. Recycling worn-out products and waste into new raw materials is one of the most effective measures to reduce the climate impact since energy consumption is lower in the recycling of materials than in the extraction of new raw materials from nature.
One interesting development in this field took place in January 2021, when we started a new project to test the precipitated calcium phosphate (PCP) recovered from Ragn-Sells innovation company EasyMining's Ash2Phos technology. The EU has listed phosphorus as one of 30 critical raw materials, as phosphorus is critical for the EU economy and the supply is linked to several risk factors. The PCP from the Ash2Phos-technology has attractive properties as a raw material for fertilisers and as feed phosphate with a high phosphorus content, low fluorine content, and high solubility in citric acid. The PCP also has lower emissions and is more environmentally friendly than virgin phosphorus.
