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Leaders in Zero Liquid Discharge.

As a sustainably operating company, H2O GmbH has been pursuing a sustainability strategy derived from its corporate values since 2015; in order to fulfil its corporate responsibility for people, society, the economy and the environment.

Our sustainability report, which we are now publishing for the fifth time in a row, is an important tool for us to communicate our goals transparently and honestly, to report successes, to identify potential for optimisation and to shape new goals.

 In 2022, we conducted a novel thematic survey among our stakeholders. The process identified four additional, new areas that complement our current sustainability report.

 The table shows the identified topics:

The comprehensive 54-page sustainability report is currently only available in German. However, interested parties from other countries can find a much abridged overview here, which summarises the most important innovations from the three main areas  economy, ecology and social affairs.

 

Enjoy reading this summary,

Your team of H2O GmbH

 

Economy:

 

To realise our vision of a wastewater-free future for industry, we are pursuing a long-term growth strategy.

From the beginning of 2022 onwards, we have seen significant growth in our order intake, resulting in a new record order backlog. However, we were struggling to sell and deliver these orders timely during the year. This had its origin in the fact that there were many customer postponements, and likewise, long delivery times for required components led to longer delivery times. Against this background, the results achieved are clearly below the previous year's level, but better than anticipated and feared.

Rising demand for our resource-saving technologies

In the long term, due to the consequences of climate change (noticeable water shortage, less precipitation) and the resulting requirements for all industries (tightening of discharge limits, Closed Substance Cycle Waste Management Act), we expect an increasing demand for our technologies and solutions that will enable our customers to produce without wastewater. We therefore expect an annual sales growth of between 8 and 12 percent over the next five years.

Regionally based, regionally committed, regional suppliers

 

Since our founding in 1999, we have been based here in South Baden close to the Swiss border and have strong roots in the region. By offering public use of our charging points located on the company premises, we are making a contribution to promoting e-mobility in the region.

We also maintain many long-standing supplier relationships that are characterised by trust. It is important to us that we work intensively with local suppliers. We source 43.1 percent of the material for our plant construction from our TOP 50 suppliers in Baden-Württemberg.

Around 1,900 VACUDEST systems have already been installed worldwide. They make a valuable contribution to sustainable, wastewater-free production. From the very first VACUDEST until today, about 36 million m³ of water have already been treated. This corresponds to the water filling of an incredible 14,400 Olympic swimming pools. iStock-Evgenii Mitroshin

Ecology:

With our first sustainability report in 2018, we started to determine and document our CO2 emissions (Scope 1+2). In the following year, we set ourselves the goal of CO2-neutral production by 2030. To achieve this, we want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 10 percent every year. The base year for this is 2019.

In order to monitor our key figures on a monthly basis, we created a GHG cockpit in 2021 in which we maintain our data and bundle it in one place. We also anchored the reduction of GHG emissions in the annual corporate goals.

In addition, we also plan to look at our indirect emissions along the supply chain with the Scope 3 evaluation. As the survey results among our suppliers in 2022 have not been not meaningful, we want to find another robust solution to determine Scope 3 in 2023.

E-mobility will be further promoted

In order to save CO2 during our business trips, we are focusing on e-mobility in addition to avoiding unnecessary business trips and using online meetings. In the reporting year 2022, H2O GmbH's fleet includes a total of 34 vehicles, 19 of which are passenger cars and 15 commercial vehicles. In the meantime, a large part of the field sales force is already driving electric vehicles. At the end of 2022, 13 of the 19 passenger cars have been electric cars, four more than last year. We will continue to replace all the combustion engines in our fleet with electric cars at the end of the lease.

Whether the ID Buzz will prove itself as a suitable, future service technician emergency vehicle will be seen in 2023.

We see the biggest hurdle of the conversion to e-mobility in our commercial vehicles, since our technicians often have to cover long distances within Germany and Europe by car and under time pressure. That is why we are testing the practicality of our first electric van in the daily routine of our field service in 2023.

Electricity consumption increased slightly in 2022 - new battery storage increases self-consumption rate

Overall, electricity consumption in 2022 increased slightly compared to the previous year 2021. This increase resulted on the one hand from a slightly changed product portfolio and on the other hand from the additional tests and trial runs in the technical center, which aided product development and prototype testing.

Our photovoltaic system makes a major contribution to saving energy. On average, it supplies us with enough electricity to power our operations independently. In 2022, our solar power plant produced 286 megawatts of electricity. From this energy, we consumed around 127 megawatts ourselves. We were able to feed the remaining 159 megawatts into the grid as green electricity, thus reducing GHG emissions.

In order to be able to use more of our own energy on shady days or in the winter months, we installed a battery storage system in November 2022, which directly increased the self-consumption rate by 11 percent. The battery storage will be able to unfold its full potential in 2023.

Goal 2023: We aim to install a Hypercharger in our e-vehicle charging park, enabling our employees and the public to fast-charge their vehicles. We also aim to increase the self-sufficiency rate of our plant in Steinen from 47 percent to 57 percent with self-produced electricity from our solar power plant.

 

When shipping our parts, we continue to reuse the filling material that we receive from our suppliers. In this way, we avoid waste and also save costs.

Gas consumption was down in 2022 - thermal insulation and savings measures show effect

Gas consumption has fallen to 210,000 kWh in 2022, resulting in CO2 emissions of 40 tonnes. In relation to the heated area, this means a consumption of around 61 kWh / m². We thus achieve the energy efficiency class B of residential buildings. For a production building, this is an exceptionally good value, which shows that the additional thermal insulation measures in the extension building in 2019 are having an effect.

This decrease was reinforced by the energy-saving measures we implemented and the mild temperatures. In order to save gas, we set ourselves the goal in autumn of using 20 percent less heating energy. To achieve this, we optimised the times of night setback and the supply temperatures, for example, and lowered the room temperature from 22 °C to 20.5 °C in the offices and to 19 °C in the warehouse and production.

Social:

To achieve our goals, we need qualified and motivated employees. Therefore, as an attractive employer, we want to attract new and retain employees. Sustainable human resources management is therefore very important to us.

We celebrate successes: not only at our annual Christmas parties, but also, as depicted here, for the largest contract in the company's history in October 2022 on our H2O campus, which will be completed in 2022.

We offer flexible working from the home office, an open, honest and regular information policy, support in balancing work and family life through holiday childcare for employees' children, the payment of state-subsidised bonuses such as the Coronabonus or the inflation bonus, health offers and the appreciation of our employees through a fair salary as well as strength-oriented personnel development through further training opportunities.

Our employees can get more exercise in their daily lives by taking advantage of the Job Bike, which we have been offering on a low-cost lease basis since September and which has been well received by our employees so far.

Training and further education as a solution to the shortage of skilled workers

Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, training and further education is an important component for us. As of the end of 2022, we were training eight young people, with more to come in 2023.

In addition, regular training courses on H2O-specific topics are held for our employees in our internal academy. At external training providers, for example, daily seminars can be attended for further training on current topics. Those who wish to develop their skills in the long term, e.g. within the framework of further training (e.g. master craftsman, business economist, technician, etc.) can be sponsored by the company, which will pay the costs. In return, the employees commit themselves to working for us for some time after completing the training.

The turnover rate of our employees in 2022 is 11 per cent. We were able to recruit 18 new employees who are between 16 and 55 years old.

Conclusion

2022 is the first year after the pandemic that business travel returned to near normal. Nevertheless, we were able tomeet our savings targets by avoiding unnecessary travel and taking advantage of what the pandemic offered us with online meetings now established. We again exceeded our target of saving 10 per cent CO2 each year - measured against the 2019 baseline - which we are very proud of.

Well informed but still have questions?

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Requests

You have questions on our VACUDEST systems?

Kindly contact us!

 

Your contact is:

Thomas Dotterweich
 Senior Sales Engineer

+49 7627 9239-306
thomasm.dotterweich@h2o-de.com

Service

You need consumables, spare parts or a maintenance date?

We will be pleased to assist you!

 

Your contact is:

Carles Fité
 Technical Customer Support

+49 7627 9239-888
carles.fite@h2o-de.com

Career

You want to be part of our team and create the wastewater-free future with us?

We will tell you how!

 

Your contact is:

Bettina Böhringer
Human Resources

+49 7627 9239-201
career@h2o-de.com