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| Sustainable development review (continued) Pages | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | | |||||||||
| Meeting the HIV/Aids challenge | |||||||||
| The group-wide Sasol HIV/Aids Response Programme (SHARP), launched in September 2002, focuses on reducing the rate of HIV infection throughout our South African operations and improving the quality of life of infected and affected employees by providing managed healthcare. Businesses, trade unions, community representatives and independent experts all contributed to the design of SHARP. We believe that it is as a result of this collaborative approach that we have had one of the highest uptakes for voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in South Africa. In the 2005/2006 year, 83% of our employees in South Africa had undergone VCT – 7% of our tested South African employees are HIV-positive, which is well below our estimated actuarial prevalence rate of 19%. The majority of Sasol employees are members of medical aid schemes through which they access healthcare, and in particular, anti-retroviral therapy. On-site treatment is needed only at one of our operations. We are extending the provision of our HIV/Aids services to include on-site service providers, as well as Sasol franchisees. For those service providers that only provide limited benefits to their employees, we offer training and awareness programmes, as well as VCT services. In addition, we have conducted an exhaustive training and awareness programme for each of the Sasol and Exel service stations. Education sessions have been provided for about 5 000 service station employees, and each service station has been provided with information on their nearest available public health resource. |
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Sasol HIV/Aids Response Programme(SHARP) focuses on reducing the rate of HIV infection throughout our Southern African operations |
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| Improving our safety performance | |||||||||
| In response to a series of safety incidents during 2004, Sasol appointed DuPont Safety Resources
to perform a comprehensive safety review of our South African operations. The observations and
recommendations emanating from this review formed the basis of a comprehensive group-wide
safety improvement plan during the 2005 financial year. This plan is reviewed and updated as
progress is achieved. The impact of this safety improvement plan is demonstrated by the continuing improvement in our safety record. Our recordable case rate (RCR) for employees and service providers, including occupational illnesses, has improved to 0,75 in 2007 from 0,93 in 2006. While there were 147 fewer injuries in total, we regret to report that three service providers and one employee were fatally injured in workplace incidents. This compares with four fatalities in the previous year and 17 in our 2005 financial year. Progress to date and targets are being reviewed by way of defining a safety roadmap to guide us towards meeting our longer term RCR targets of 0,4 by July 2011 and 0,3 by July 2015. Important safety initiatives were undertaken as part of our comprehensive change management programme, with the intention of ensuring that safety remains our first priority and a core value of everyone at Sasol. We have recently approved new process safety management standards, commenced implementation of an expanded process safety management training programme, and approved a revised safety performance incentive initiative. We have developed a safety management standard for service providers, which includes provision for the sanctioning of service providers who fail to meet safety commitments. All businesses have implemented their own sitespecific safety plans, the progress of which is monitored by their boards as well as the group executive SH&E committee. |
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 The RCR is the number of fatalities,lost workdays, restricted work cases, medical treatments beyond first-aid cases and accepted illnesses, for every 200 000 employee hours worked. |
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| Targeting fewer incidents | |||||||||
| We reported 21 significant fires, explosions and releases in 2007, compared with 15 in 2006 and 25
in 2005 (for the purposes of reporting, a fire, explosion or release is registered “significant” when it:
involves a fatality or lost workday case; results in damage to property or equipment of more than
US$25 000; or causes a release of chemicals in excess of a defined threshold for relevant listed
substances). This increase in the number of incidents is a source of concern. Our process safety
management (PSM) drive is aimed at reducing these incidents to no more than three significant
fires, explosions and releases per quarter by July 2011, and a 50% reduction in minor fires,
explosions and releases, on the 2006 baseline, by July 2011. Regrettably we have also seen an increase in the rate of transport incidents on the previous year. We believe that this is due, at least in part, to more accurate reporting systems. There were 52 significant incidents, compared with 35 such incidents in financial 2006, 31 in financial 2005, and 44 in financial 2004. The predominant cause of incidents remains collisions with other vehicles, most often attributable to the other drivers. We aim to reduce the number of significant logistics incidents per 100 000 tons of product transported by 50%, on the 2004 baseline, by July 2009. To meet this target, Sasol has a multi-pronged approach for mitigating the risk of transport incidents. This includes: Sasol’s Safety and Quality Assessment System aimed at improving the safety, quality and environmental performance of all logistical service providers involved in transporting, handling and storing Sasol products; identifying and selecting appropriate transportation routes; ensuring the availability and readiness of effective emergency response services; and implementing structured measures for incident root-cause analysis and follow-up. To manage responses to incidents involving the transportation of our products internationally, we have established a global call centre that provides access to expertise on all our products in relevant languages. |
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| Reducing greenhouse gas emissions | |||||||||
| Sasol considers global climate change to be one of our principal strategic challenges, not only for
our existing operations, but also as we investigate opportunities to roll out our technologies
globally. At year end our total emissions of greenhouse gases, measured as carbon dioxide (CO2)
equivalent, was 71,4 million tons compared with 73,5 million tons in 2006 and 72,5 million tons in
2005. Our emissions inventory has been developed using the greenhouse gas reporting protocol
of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute.
Our direct and indirect CO2 emissions have been independently verified by KPMG. We have recently approved a greenhouse gas policy statement and an environmental roadmap for the next 15 years, with a particular focus on greenhouse gases and water. We have committed to a group target of achieving at least a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product, on the 2005 baseline, by July 2015. We intend to achieve this by: |
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| A greenhouse gas management forum has been established to give guidance and direction to
the group on these issues. We are investigating opportunities to capture and store CO2 as part of our planned international expansion of our coal-to-liquids (CTL) interests. We have recently commissioned a study for a comprehensive life cycle assessment of CTL operations, accommodating CTL designs in countries such as India, China and the USA. These models will use data from the feasibility study as they become available. We have registered a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project for the reduction of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from our Sasol Nitro operations in South Africa. It is anticipated that the project will reduce N2O emissions by an amount equivalent to about one million tons of CO2 a year. Several new CDM projects are in the pipeline. Our Italian and German chemical operations have participated in the European Emission Trading Scheme to ensure that we meet our allocation requirements in terms of EU legislation. The National Allocation Plan for the 2008 – 2012 trading phase is not yet finalised. We have participated in the global Carbon Disclosure Project and are committed to continued transparency in reporting our performance. Internationally, we continue to participate in a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is examining possibilities for sequestrating CO2. |
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 Antoinette Coetzer at the SasolTechnology R&D Ecotoxicology lab, Sasolburg |
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