IFA Members' Commitments

IFA's 12 SHE Principles

All IFA members have adopted the 12 IFA Safety, Health and Environment Principles, which commits them to “establish and improve their safety, security, health and environmental performance through annual objectives, targets or key performance indicators,” among other actions.

IFA Stewardship Champions

IFA Industry Stewardship Champions label is awarded to fertilizer companies that have participated in all of IFA’s most recent Safety Performance, Environmental Performance and Energy Efficiency and CO₂ Emissions benchmarks and that are certified IFA Protect & Sustain, the product stewardship standard for fertilizer companies. This label also applies to members who have valid international certifications that are the building blocks of Protect & Sustain (ISO, OHSAS and Responsible Care).

Protect & Sustain Certification

The IFA “Protect & Sustain” certification proposes a practical framework for implementing product stewardship practices, as well as tools to maintain them and measure the progress achieved.

Protect & Sustain was developed by IFA members for IFA members, with independent auditors DNV-GL and SGS, and has become the de facto global product stewardship standard for fertilizers.

Six areas are examined: management system, product development and planning, sourcing and contractor management, manufacturing techniques, supply chain to customer, as well as marketing, sales and application.

What makes this certification distinctive is the focus on product security and the in-depth coverage of the whole supply chain: from raw material sourcing to security of fertilizer sales.

The certification process usually takes between three to five months.

Protect & Sustain is available for fertilizers producers and other companies in the fertilizer value chain (fertilizer distributors, ports, traders and transporters).

IFA Benchmarks

100 percent voluntary, 100 percent confidential, 100 percent accessible: IFA offers all members three benchmarks to measure their progress in SHE (Safety, Health and Environment) management.

These benchmarks are:

The Employee Safety Performance Survey

The Energy Eefficiency
& CO₂ Emissions Benchmark

IFA Environmental Performance Benchmark

Safety and Security

Our target is ZERO. Injuries and occupational illnesses, as well as safety and environmental incidents, are ALL preventable.

IFA has published the 4th edition of its Safety Handbook, a practical guide for managing safety in the fertilizer industry, which provides the guiding principles of positive safety management, an outline of the specific processes to manage safety and guidance for day-to-day safety management.

Safety Handbook

Establishing and Maintaining Positive Safety Management Practices in the Work Place.

Read

Nutrient Recycling and Re-use

Phosphogypsum (PG), a mineral that occurs both naturally and as a co- or by-product of many industrial processes, has a wide range of uses in industry and agriculture. PG is a safe, reusable resource for which there are many beneficial uses, such as a multi-nutrient sulfur-rich fertilizer, high-quality plaster or wallboard, or as a road-bed material.

Different countries regulate PG differently, but in the majority of PG producing countries such as Brazil, Canada, China, India, Russia, Morocco and Belgium, the industry has been working with academia to review and revise the approaches to its use. In some countries, such as Brazil and Belgium, re-use is reaching 100 percent.

You can find out more about the sustainable management and reuse of PG through our 2020 Report, infographic and webinar:

Phosphogypsum Leadership Innovation Partnership

How the Fertilizer Industry is Reusing Phosphogypsum

Phosphogysum:
it's simple really

Fertilizer Sampling and Analysis Recommendations

IFA’s Method Harmonization Working Group, created in 2010 to help the membership deal with an increase of contractual disputes due to the variable use of methods and procedures to sample and analyze international product shipments, has developed and published several best practice recommendation documents available below. These should be considered as reference documents for the international trade of fertilizer products, not as international standards, nor should they take precedence over existing national and regional regulations or standards.