We consider environmental protection as a crucial part of our social responsibility and focus on controlling and minimizing not only the direct environmental impacts, but also indirect environmental impacts occur in the entire value chain. Our target is to have lean and efficient manufacturing processes that have minimum impact on the environment. We commit to constantly reduce the negative impacts we create on environment.

Sustainability Committee and Sustainability Working Group act in accordance with Tofaş Environmental and Energy Policy in management of environmental issues; and report environmental performance to the Board of Directors.

We allocate a significant amount of resource to environmental management expenditures in order to improve environmental performance. In the reporting period, we spent over 1.4 million TL to environmental management activities and investments.

We organize environmental trainings to increase the environmental awareness of our employees and the employees of our business partners. In 2017, we have organized 1,662 person*hour environmental training to Tofaş employees and business partner employees.

In 2017, we did not encounter any case of unconformity to environmental regulations and we were not exposed to any official sanction. We did not receive any complaints from stakeholders about our environmental impacts.

Detailed information about Environmental Management and Tofaş Environment and Energy Policy are available on www.tofas.com.tr/en/sustainability/Pages/Environment/Policy.aspx or on our 2017 Tofaş Annual Report which we publish interactively on ir.tofas.com.tr/en/index.html.

Water Management

We shape our water management approach according to the principle of efficient water use. We manage our water consumption and waste water processes responsibly and work to conduct our activities with the least possible water consumption.

A significant amount of our water used in production processes is withdrawn from underground water. The municipal water and the water bought from third parties for domestic use and potable water have a small share of 0.5% in our total water use. We conduct periodical analysis for the consistency and sustainability of the water resources that we use. As a result of analysis carried out in 2017, no stress caused by our consumption was found on resource consistency. On the other hand, the water requirements of our stakeholders, notably the local community living close to our production facilities, are not under any risk because of the type of the water we use.

We reduced fresh water consumption per vehicle which was 3.27 m3 in 2016 to 3.15 m3/vehicle with an improvement of 3.7%. We aim to reduce this ratio to 2.50 m3/vehicle by 2020.

We emphasize responsible use of fresh water resources. In this context, we reuse the fresh water withdrawn for multiple cycles and feed the production with recycled waste water which arises as a result of processes; thus, we supply the most significant share of our water requirement. During the reporting period, we recovered 63.2 million m3 of water in this context.

We monitor our biodiversity impacts on the natural environments and the organisms that live there in order them not to be affected by our operations and we conduct the environmental impact assessment studies. We perform periodic controls with an aim to identify potential risks and take precautions to mitigate those. We adopt the principles of the Biological Diversity Agreement to which Turkey is a signatory party.

The waste water management is an important part of our water management understanding because of its potential negative impacts on biodiversity. We try to recycle the waste water occurred during our operations at a maximum level at our modern treatment facilities and we discharge waste water to the receiving environments with loads under the limit values defined in discharge permits. In 2017, we discharged 9.9 million m3 of waste water. The receiving environments defined in our discharge permits are not high biodiversity value areas; moreover, thanks to our waste water discharge performance, no negative impact found on current biodiversity value or living beings during calculations and audits performed by public authorities.

Material and Waste Management

In regards to Tofaş Environment and Energy Policy, we aim to reduce the waste at the source and to recover as much as possible. We focus on the reduction of material use, recycled/ recyclable materials to be used on a larger scale, and waste amount to be minimized and fully recovered.

We ensure all industrial wastes in production process to be used as a recycled material or as raw material and energy resource in the cement industry, so we reach our aim “zero waste disposal. In addition to our related business units, we ensure that our suppliers play an active role in using environmentally-friendly materials in production processes and reducing the amount of material.

Our total waste amount per vehicle which was 47.2 kg in 2016 was reduced to 43.76 kg/vehicle in 2017. We aim to reduce this amount to 44 kg/vehicle by 2020.