CSR’s energy efficient building products and systems have the potential to reduce heating and cooling requirements of homes and buildings to reduce energy demand with the consequential reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Increasingly, CSR produces these products from recycled materials which reduces the demand for raw materials and lowers emissions and pollution during manufacturing.

Through its Sugar business, CSR is contributing to sustainability by developing renewable energy (electricity and fuel) from waste sugar cane and producing fertilisers which are re-applied to cane fields.

CSR is the second largest producer of renewable fuel ethanol in Australia which is made from molasses, a by-product of sugar production which is not a food staple. CSR now supplies over 250 petrol stations in Australia and has commenced a project to almost double our production of fuel ethanol to 60 million litres per year.

CSR is Australia’s largest renewable energy producer from biomass. We currently generate enough renewable electricity, which, together with a small amount of external fuel, is sufficient to operate each of our seven sugar mills in North Queensland. We have two mills where a significant surplus is produced.

That surplus, which is approximately 300 Gigawatt hours (GWh) per annum is exported into the National electricity grid and is enough to power approximately 80,000 homes.

Safety, Health & Environment

Safety, Health & Environment (SH&E) is paramount at CSR. Our goal is zero injuries, as is minimising the impact of our activities on the environment and the communities in which we operate. During the past year we:

• upgraded the charter of our SH&E Committee of the CSR Board to ensure the environment is integral to our sustainability policies and co-ordinate response to climate change issues
• standardised CSR’s SH&E responsibilities and accountabilities across the company for all job positions to ensure a consistent standard of SH&E across the company
• continued to roll out our SH&E Accreditation System across CSR, with all manufacturing sites achieving bronze accreditation
• Recorded a total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) of 19.8 recordable injuries per one million hours worked
• Recorded 52.9 days lost per million work hours. CSR’s severity rate of injuries has decreased by 61.9% since 2004

Water, Waste and Energy Use

Each of CSR’s businesses has specific environmental performance measures for water and energy consumption and waste production. Each business also has plans in place for continuous improvement on these measures. During the year:

• CSR’s Building Products* division consumed 1,041,197 kilolitres of potable water; the Sugar division consumed 6,095,761 kilolitres of potable water and extracted surface or ground water
• A total of 59,062 tonnes of solid waste was produced within Building Products* division and 18,299 tonnes of solid waste was produced by the Sugar division
• For the period 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008, greenhouse gas emissions from CSR’s majority owned businesses were 1,389,819 tonnes of CO₂-e. The scope 1 (direct) tonnes of CO₂-e in Australia was 713,378 tonnes; the scope 1 (direct) outside Australia was 148,740 tonnes
• The scope 2 (indirect) tonnes of CO₂-e emitted in Australia was 467,454 tonnes. The scope 2 (indirect) outside Australia was 60,247 tonnes
• CSR Sugar generated sufficient renewable electricity for the creation of 281,214 Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), or 5% of Australia’s Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. This is equivalent to taking 60,000 cars off the road, or enough renewable electricity to supply approximately 24,000 homes with power for a year

*excludes Viridian glass business acquired during the year.