The world’s leading cosmetics manufacturer L'Oréal has opened a new biomethanisation plant in Libramont,making this Belgian site its first “100% green energy” factory.

With this new procedure, the Libramont site, which employs 400 people and produces colour kits and haircare products to be sold in Europe, will now generate 100% of its own electricity requirements and 80% of its heating requirements, according to a L'Oréal press release.

The heating requirements not provided by the biomethanisation plant (20%) will be covered by traditional natural gas, but “the excess electricity production, equivalent to the requirements of approximately 4,000 homes, by far offsets the CO2 produced by the consumption of this natural gas,” a L'Oréal spokesperson reassured AFP.

The site will therefore be “neutral in terms of carbon emissions.”

In practice, the biomethanisation plant, developed by the Belgian companies Eneco and Bio Energie Europa, will use a fermentation process to transform the biomass produced by local farmers and the agri-food industry into methane.

L'Oréal has notably made a commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% between 2005 and 2015.

27/10/2009 - L'Echo.be