We are an SME that has been developing for 50 years serving critical surface operations, providing solutions to treat, degrease, protect, strip, inspect, disinfect and coat them.

 We mainly serve the mobility market: aeronautics, automotive, railways, energy and nuclear, as well as the BtoB detergents and disinfectants sector.

Over the past 50 years, significant progress has been made in the area of Health and Environmental Risks, whether by regularly eliminating the use of certain raw materials, by significantly increasing the resilience of our employees' and customers' non-exposure to risks, or by making investments and processes ever safer.

As a niche activity, between global suppliers who manufacture chemical molecules and our global customers who meet critical safety and reliability requirements, where do we stand on the dimension of contribution and dependence on greenhouse gases and on the gigantic challenge of global warming?

We have just completed our first step: establishing the 2021 carbon footprint of our subsidiary SOCOMORE France, which accounts for 50% of the Group's turnover. This is a simple, first step, but it allows us to quantify and then act in a conscious and responsible way.

For the 33 M€ of turnover of this subsidiary in 2021 :

- We emit 400 tCO2eq per year via the combination of our direct emissions and our indirect emissions linked to our energy consumption (Scope 1 and 2). 

- We depend on 13,000 tCO2eq emitted by our upstream chain, mainly via the purchase of our raw materials (Scope 3)

- We depend on 2,400 tCO2eq downstream for the transport of our products to our customers, their application by our customers and their destruction at the end of their life (Scope 3)

We now have a quantifiable measure of our responsibility in this collective challenge.

We have initiated our action plan because acting collectively motivates action from  the world and therefore SOCOMORE too. First of all, we prepared a precise presentation of the carbon footprint to make each of our teams aware of our collective impacts and their origin. This will highlight easy gains, as soon as possible (sobriety), material investments when more efficient solutions exist (insulation, videoconferencing vs. travel when adapted, switching to electricity, renewable energy production, etc.), and a much wider key challenge with the preparation for product innovation investments compliant to low carbon world cobuilt with our supplier and customer ecosystems.

The induced emissions of our mobility customers are 6 orders of magnitude higher than our Scope 1 and Scope 2 combined (our direct production emissions and our energy-related emissions). Our customers are publishing their own state of affairs in this area and are embarking on major revolutions such as electric or hydrogen-powered cars, Sustainable Aircraft Fuel, hydrogen-powered aircraft, etc., in addition to the transformation of their own operations.

Humanity has emitted 42,000,000,000 tC02 in 2021, which is 8 orders of magnitude higher than our Scope 1 and 2 combined. As citizens, more and more of us are making decisions and taking action.

SOCOMORE's emissions, which are low compared to these global figures, could make us feel less responsible, but that would be a mistake.

As chemical solution providers for the mobility markets, our job obliges us to act. It has always pushed us to innovate in order to reduce the Health-Environment risks that Chemistry can generate. As a human activity, our business also obliges us, like any other company, to actively contribute to reduce the global carbon footprint.

The reduction of our emissions and dependencies on greenhouse gases is an additional challenge to be met in our Socoway (our CSR policy). Reducing them will directly contribute to improving our Health & Environment impact, as well as our social impact contribution due to global warming, and also economically, as only a sustainable company can share the economic fruits of its activity.

The decarbonation action plan, underway for SOCOMORE France, and the carbon footprints for the year 2022 to be evaluated for all our subsidiaries, are examples of what will follow.

By measuring our carbon footprint year to year, with humility, transparency and accompanied by actions, we continue to make our Socoway by concrete results again and again.

Suppliers, Customers, Colleagues, territories, need more than ever to collaborate strongly together to meet this challenge.