Conserving resources has always been a goal at our factories – for the simple reason that maximizing resource efficiency makes good business sense and allows these factories to be more competitive. The same is true for the company as a whole. And we are successful on this road we’re taking – almost all environmental indicators improved from fiscal year 2005/06 to fiscal year 2006/07. To continue this process, we are setting goals for ourselves: We aim to considerably improve resource efficiency over a five year period, relative to 2005/06. Specifically, these goals entail improvements of:

• Energy use / CO2 emissions:    -20%
• Water use                               -20%
• Waste                                    -15%

To measure the degree of achievement of OSRAM environment protection objectives, environmental data is systematically recorded on a corporate level. We started this process with European factory sites, and continually rolled out the tracking system, until - in 2005/06 -  we reached full coverage of all relevant OSRAM sites. Now data is regularly collected and used to compile reports on the amount of resources and energy consumed. Environmental reports contain information on specific and absolute water consumption, changes in carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, and the volume of waste produced at each plant.

The gathering of this data is subject to a continual improvement process. The downside of continually improving is the realization that some data from previous years was not perfect. Although we have done our best to verify the data and check it for plausibility, we must acknowledge the possibilities that minor errors remain. These may be the result of:

• Inexperience of local users using the system for the first time when the system was rolled out globally.
• Different understanding of classifications. An example is the different understanding of the term ‘hazardous waste’ in different parts of the world.
• Different units in use around the world. While mixing up gallons and cubic meters will probably show up in a plausibility check, mistakes involving imperial long tons, net tons, or metric tons may go unnoticed.

We will correct any mistakes we find to improve the quality of our data. An external auditor has accompanied the gathering of data for 2006/07, and we plan to certify these figures in the future.

Scope of coverage

We are now publishing data obtained from all relevant production sites worldwide, a total of 47 separate entities. These include:

• 20 sites in Europe, including our Munich Headquarter
• 19 sites in North and South America, mainly part of our OSRAM SYLVANIA operation
• 8 sites in Asia

These locations represent approximately 92% of our total workforce, but nearly all OSRAM production.

It is important to note that two locations – including our recently acquired plant in Smolensk – only started reporting in the FY 05/06.