West Flanders Sustainable Business Charter
In 2012, Roularta again obtained the West Flanders Sustainable Business Charter. For this, independent experts from Flemish government agencies assess the Group's efforts and achievements in the field of sustainability by means of regular audits over a two-year period. This is done in close consultation with, among others, Voka and Bureau Veritas.

Energy Audit Covenant
To further optimise its internal energy policy, Roularta signed up at the end of 2006 to the Flemish government's Energy Audit Covenant. Signatory companies commit to submit a multi-annual energy plan to the Flemish government's verification office. Annually reporting to this control body on planned/executed measures and avoided CO2 emissions is required.

Meanwhile, the measures to implement the second energy plan were completed. The implemented investments bring very significant savings of electrical and thermal energy, along with an important reduction in CO2 emissions. For the purchase of electricity, the company had already switched entirely over to renewable sources.

Monitoring of energy, water and raw materials
The consumption of energy and raw materials has long been carefully monitored. This offers the possibility to explore opportunities to systematically do better.

Within the manufacturing environment, a number of further achievements were recorded during the year. Two examples are:

• further optimisation of the control on the afterburner for the Colorman presses. This represents a cost saving of approximately 50% compared to the initial consumption. We will also be examining whether this method can also be applied to the other afterburner installation that processes a larger portion of the emission flow;
  
• the installation of a high pressure air humidification installation in the production hall to replace the energy-consuming compressed airborne humidification. This represents a significant investment with a payback period of 2.6 years.

Responsible forest management
In 2012 Roularta again received both the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council Schemes) and the PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) certificates. Every year an external auditor verifies that the printing organisation continues to meet the FSC and PEFC requirements. These certificates guarantee sustainable forest management. More and more of the Group's own publications are printed on such paper.

Roularta is also working hard to make increasing use of recycled paper. All newspapers are printed on 100% recycled paper and the lifestyle magazine Steps is also printed on 100% recycled glossy magazine paper.

Measuring our CO2 footprint
In 2012, Roularta was the first printer in Belgium to mea-sure the ecological footprint of its production process, using the ClimateCalc tool made available by the Febelgra sector federation.

ClimateCalc was developed by a consortium of European printing federations, based on the GHG Protocol and the recommendations of the ISO 14064 standard.

For calculating the CO2 footprint of graphics operations, ClimateCalc uses various parameters ranging from the paper and offset plates to direct and indirect emissions based on energy consumption, to personnel transport and transportation of the finished product. The parameters examined cover around 95% of CO2 emissions.
The aim of this module is to gain a better understanding of the composition of the footprint, so as to be able to address it at a later stage.

Vehicle fleet is getting greener
By consistently opting for the most economical cars on the market, the average CO2 emissions for a new company vehicle have fallen further: from an average 141 g/km in 2007 to 108 g/km in 2012. The 2013 procurement policy for new cars will result in a further reduction of the average CO2 emission to 105 g/km.

Average CO2 emission of new RMG cars

Mobiscan screening for sustainable mobility
The West Flanders Provincial Mobility Point offers businesses an opportunity to have a sustainable mobility audit carried out by a specialised team. Its Mobiscan tool analyses the company's accessibility and employee home-work travel. In a first step it maps how and by what means of transport employees travel to work. This is followed by an analysis of employees' places of residence, schedules and traffic flows. All data are assembled in order to examine how many employees could potentially travel to work in a more sustainable way.

This study significantly supplements the company's various previous efforts in the area of sustainable mobility. It shows that we can place even more emphasis on carpooling and on bicycle use. Many employees live within cycling distance of work, or travel in the same direction with the same schedule, allowing them to drive together. We will continue to promote and pay attention to these aspects.