ARN
Four promises, five sustainable development goals
ARN has also played a pivotal role in car recycling in the Netherlands in 2018. The organisation supported its chain partners as an initiator, catalyse, knowledge centre and facilitator. In this ARN Sustainability Report you can read how it did this and the results it achieved. For the second year, ARN has submitted itself to the yardstick of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the motto ‘lean and green’ in mind.
It was a busy and eventful year, in which ARN helped advance the quantity and quality of car recycling. Furthermore, ARN carried on in the same vein after it underwent a recalibration and change of direction in 2016 and 2017 towards an organisation that acts as an active, but emphatically also a practical and effective facilitator of the recycling chain. What was the style and tone? Active and purposeful. Targeted and emphatically not on autopilot. Focused on partnership instead of being directive. Constructive and pro-active!
Four essential promises were key in 2018:
- Partnership based on equality, with car dismantling companies, collection companies, recycling companies, intermediary companies, shredder companies and the Post Shredder Technology (PST) plant.
- A level playing field. The bona fide parties in the car recycling sector, our chain partners, should be able to rely on fair relationships without fake exports and harmful leakage flows.
- Acting as a facilitator. ARN pools forces, for instance through the collective collection and processing of materials and facilitates the proper operation of the chain.
- ARN wants to work actively and entrepreneurially on sustainable car recycling. It invests in recycling resources, knowledge exchanges, training courses and the PST plant for this purpose.
It will only be possible to fulfil the four promises if ARN places more emphasis on ‘together’ than in the past. We work together with everyone, both inside and outside the chain, and in the automotive industry. We work with universities and research institutions for knowledge and innovation. We work with companies, so that we can jointly develop new applications for final fractions. ARN is also pleased to embark on educational projects on innovation in recycling techniques, material applications and other forms of modernisation in the automotive industry. ARN does this by maintaining close contact with importers and manufacturers.
Guiding and inspiring – the SDGs
There is definitely no shortage of good intentions. However, what drives ARN and which benchmarks does it chose for itself? The seventeen ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDG’s) of the United Nations were once again of great value in 2018, as sources of inspiration and pointers. These Sustainable Development Goals enable people, companies, institutions, governments and authorities, each at their own level and in their own way, to make a contribution to reducing poverty, inequality and climate change.
Five SDGs as drivers
ARN selected five SDGs as its drivers and principle goals. These five SDGs were specifically chosen because they fit well with the activities performed by ARN in the car recycling sector. These are the five goals that are close to the organisation, its staff and the chain partners and where we want to make progress. These goals, which we will use to contribute to the circular economy are as follows:
- Ensuring sustainable patterns of consumption and production
- Sustainable and affordable energy
- Ensuring inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent jobs
- Partnerships for the goals
- Innovation and sustainable infrastructure
The compass
These five goals act as a ‘compass’ for the choices that ARN makes. Furthermore, ARN integrated these five SDGs into its organisational objectives in 2018. Perhaps these seem to be too general, but that is certainly not the case: ARN uses the SDGs in a very practical manner in order to test the issue and choices facing the organisation. Are we really doing what we should be doing? Are we prioritising matters in the right way and what are we not doing? How do our choices and actions develop, when you look at the ideas behind the SDGs? The SDGs are both inspiring and guiding.
They also help ARN to be critical and to keep its feet firmly on the ground when it is successful. For instance, ARN has been rather successful at car recycling with its chain partners, but can we do better? We can. The car recycling chain managed to save 186.58 ktonnes of CO2 in 2018 (in 2017: 170.23 ktonnes). The quality of our process is increasingly in balance with carbon tax and costs.
Our challenge for today and tomorrow is clear: The SDGs enable us to work on a circular society!