K+S is the world's largest supplier of salt products, the fifth largest potash producer in the world, and the largest supplier of potash and magnesium products in Western Europe. For us, product responsibility means sustainability and quality. It is our commitment to ensure the safety and quality of our products as well as their environmental compatibility. This applies just as much to our customers, and employees as it does to society.
Holistic product responsibility
With our products and integrated solutions, we respond to our customer's needs. We support our commercial clients in creating economic value and make a positive contribution to the lives of our customers.
We take a holistic approach to product responsibility. These are our principles:
- We ensure that products are responsibly developed, purchased, manufactured, stored, transported, and used.
- We continuously improve environmental protection, health protection, and the safety of our employees during production, not only in the mine and in the factory.
- We support our customers in the safe handling and use of our products, for example by offering them application advice from our experts. Close and trusting cooperation with our customers is particularly valuable for the safe handling of our products.
Our committment to product responsibility is reflected in product certificates and sustainability-specific standards such as Sedex and EcoVadis certificates.
Ecological, economic and social impacts of our products
Along the different life cycle phases, products or services have different direct and indirect impacts on society, the environment and our economy.
In order to identify the ecological, economic and social impacts of our product portfolio, both positive and negative, as detailed as possible and to be able to visualize these impacts, we have used the impact valuation tool.
As a producer of products in the fields of medicine, pharmaceuticals, food production, agriculture and animal feed, as well as for numerous industrial applications, we have a wide-ranging impact on society, the environment and the economy through their manufacture and subsequent use.
Contribution of our products to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
With product value impacting, we have developed and implemented an approach to quantify product impacts. Based on product value impacting, we have created a matrix that shows the contribution of our product portfolio to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs of Agenda 2030 are 17 global goals for sustainable development. For each product segment, in addition to the direct contribution to the SDGs, the long-term, higher-order, indirect contribution was also assigned. The result is a matrix that shows indirect and direct contributions of the K+S customer segments to the SDGs.
