Interview conducted by France Chimie as part of the Responsible Care Diagnostic initiative.
Interview with Emilie Diorflar, QSE/RSE Manager at Elixance. Elixance specializes in coloring, functionalizing thermoplastics and formulating eco-friendly materials. The company’s Responsible Care “Confirmed Diagnosis” approach has enabled it to position itself as a mature and credible player vis-à-vis its customers, particularly with regard to sustainable development issues.
What role does CSR play in your activities?
Our job is to add color or an integrated function to plastic products, according to customer requirements. These are extremely varied. We work for the food industry, for the composition of trays and packaging of all kinds, as well as for the construction and public works sector, the cosmetics industry, the automotive industry, sports and leisure goods, etc. We also design materials based on recycled, biodegradable or biosourced polymers, incorporating post-consumer or post-industrial co-products (fishing nets, vine shoots, coffee grounds, etc.). Our eco-responsible materials aim to reduce the environmental impact of our products. In response to ever-increasing expectations, sustainable development is becoming an increasingly important part of our offering.
In the past, we had no structured approach to CSR, even though our managers have always been keen to invest in these issues. Committing to the Responsible Care standard was the logical next step in our evolution. It was an opportunity for us to formalize our commitment, particularly to customers who are increasingly demanding guarantees in this area. The fact that we can testify to our actions through labels or official validation is increasingly important.
How did you go about working with us on this initiative?
We are an organization with around forty employees, and support functions can have multiple missions. 4 functions were mobilized to carry out the Responsible Care self-diagnosis: management, the production manager, the HR manager, and myself for health and safety issues.
With the support of our consultant, we spent a whole day interviewing the people concerned. I then devoted another day to finalizing the responses, by gathering evidence to complete the questionnaire.
How did the consultant play a key role in this process?
First of all, she helped us to answer the questionnaire as objectively as possible, by taking a step back from our activities. Her input was also invaluable in interpreting certain questions, and in making the link between certain elements we had already put in place and items in the questionnaire. The fact that we were as precise and complete as possible in this work attests to the validity of our approach. Being on site, the consultant was also able to adapt easily to our operations and organization, which is particularly interesting for an SME.
How do you translate the added value provided by this overall effort?
It takes place on several levels. Through the group session with other companies, we were able to share experiences and learn from each other’s approaches. We now have a global vision of our CSR policy and know where we stand in relation to the various items in the reference framework.
Thanks to a “spider” diagram, the benchmark enables us to see visually and concretely how the company is positioned. In this way, we can easily demonstrate internally that we are already committed to CSR.
Finally, the challenge is also to establish a roadmap and prioritize the actions and aspects on which we wish to improve. From now on, each year we’ll be setting short- and medium-term CSR objectives. Last year, we had a lot of work to do in-house on chemical risk assessment. This has now been completed.
The year 2024 is mainly devoted to completing our carbon footprint. It should also be noted that our Responsible Care certification now enables us to meet our customers’ CSR requirements.
What would you say to companies that are interested but hesitant to take the plunge?
Often, good CSR intentions and actions in favor of sustainable development exist within organizations, but are limited to isolated operations. Adopting this France Chimie initiative means embarking on a collective action to make a formal commitment, with a fixed timetable, to set up an action plan that will enable significant progress to be made on these increasingly important issues.
The subject of CSR can sometimes seem a little foreign, remote and difficult to grasp. This approach allows us to meet up with many counterparts from different companies, to learn from each other’s best practices, to learn from the difficulties encountered, and to feel less alone in the face of potential obstacles.
The Responsible Care initiative offers chemical companies a set of actions designed to improve their contribution to sustainable development, ecological transition and quality of life. Thanks to these actions, the sector’s manufacturers are achieving ever better results in terms of accident reduction, raw materials consumption, waste recycling, and the development of future solutions that are both eco-responsible and socially responsible.
As an extension of this approach, France Chimie offers the “Diagnostic confirmé” scheme, which consists of personalized support through a consulting service that can be financed by the OPCO for SMEs. This mobilized consultant helps the company to carry out its Responsible Care self-diagnosis and to set up a realistic and relevant CSR action plan.
