The Responsible Care^® Global Charter  was adopted by the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) in 2006 and is the basis for the guidelines of the German Responsible Care^® Program. These two initiatives both aim to continually improve the chemical industry's track record in terms of product safety, environmental protection, health, plant safety, and security. Responsible Care^® aims to achieve a level of voluntary cooperation with government bodies and other stakeholders that goes far beyond complying with statutory regulations. In 2014, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany was among the first companies to sign the revised version of the Responsible Care^® Global Charter, which is currently being rolled out at an international level.

Our Responsible Care^® activities are founded on internal guidelines such as our “Corporate EHS Policy”  and the "EHS, Security and Quality Manual”. In implementing the Responsible Care^® Global Charter, we are currently focusing in particular on product safety, environmental protection and occupational safety.

Our product safety activities cover a range of measures. These include the implementation of regulatory requirements such as REACH  in the EU, AREC in South Korea, TSCA in the U.S., and the worldwide GHS . We also engage in voluntary initiatives such as our Global Product Strategy and pursue sustainable product development. One example of this engagement is the life science business' Design for Sustainability program, which integrates sustainability across the product development process.

When it comes to environmental protection, we are currently focusing on climate change mitigation. We aim to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, relative to the 2006 baseline. Other key focus areas include water, wastewater and waste reduction. Process safety traditionally has high priority at the company as well.

Integrated occupational safety encompasses the prevention of workplace accidents, workplace-related illnesses and workplace-related health hazards. Our goal is to reduce the lost time injury rate to 2.5 by 2015.

Our subsidiaries are regularly audited to verify their compliance with statutory and Group-wide requirements, as well as to identify areas of improvement.