In keeping with the BASF strategy – 'We create chemistry' – everything the company does is guided by the principle of sustainable development. This helps the company identify risks – and market opportunities in particular – early on. Already since 2008, BASF has been publishing, as the world's only industrial firm, an extensive CO2 balance sheet. It has set itself ambitious quantitative goals for emissions reductions and energy improvements. Its in-house Sustainability Council, chaired by this year's Green Talents juror Margret Suckale, manages and controls the company's sustainability strategy worldwide.

Corporate headquarters in Ludwigshafen also serve as the largest BASF production location worldwide. The parent plant is the cradle of the network strategy: all of the roughly 160 production operations are interlinked in multiple ways. The network is efficient in its use of resources: one plant's by-products are another plant's input materials. This way, BASF saves raw materials and energy, trims emissions, reduces logistics costs and uses synergies in its infrastructure. Pipelines provide for short travel distances in the transport of products – and for energy, in the form of fuel gas and steam. As a technology platform and Competence Center for the BASF Group, the Ludwigshafen location is an important source of innovations in products, methods and processes. The geographic proximity of research, development, marketing, technology and production promotes the development of ambitious solutions.