Because our products are shipped across the world, we at Dow, as well as our customers, recognize the importance of high standards to ensure that hazardous materials are transported and handled safely.
As a Responsible Care® company, Dow is committed to work with customers, carriers, suppliers, distributors and contractors to foster the safe use, transport and disposal of chemicals.
Dow selects carriers based on their safety performance and encourages its carriers to ensure that drivers have appropriate training and knowledge of the materials, equipment is adequate to sufficiently contain the material, and routes are chosen to avoid densely populated areas.
In 1996, Dow set an aggressive goal to reduce transportation incidents per 10,000 shipments by 90 percent by 2005. By the end of 2005, we achieved a 65 percent reduction of serious and moderate incidents and a 94 percent reduction in serious and moderate incidents with a hazardous material release versus the 1994 baseline.
In 2006, Dow announced a new set of Sustainability Goals it endeavors to achieve by 2015. These Goals include taking steps to: reduce the number of hazardous material transportation leaks, breaks and spills (LOPCs) by 75 percent, and eliminate highly hazardous (toxic Inhalation hazard and flammable gas) material releases.
Dow believes it is part of our corporate responsibility to reduce the volumes of Highly Hazardous Materials that need to be transported. So we've set a 2015 Goal to reduce the number of tonne-miles (a measure of how much we're shipping and how far) by 50 percent from our level in 2005, which was 1,410 million tonne-miles. We'll work to accomplish this by looking at ways to redesign our supply chain to reduce or eliminate many shipments or the distances they must travel. (A tonne-mile is one metric ton of freight moved 1 mile or 1.6 km.)
By reducing the number of tonne-miles of these materials, we will reduce the chance of in-transit incidents that could impact communities and areas through which our products travel. It's important to recognize that supply chain redesign is a long-term strategic business effort that may not show annual change. Strong progress toward this goal has been made over the last three years.
In 2008, there were 844 million tonne-miles of Highly Hazardous Materials shipped via road and rail. This was 32 percent better than the 2008 target of 1,202 million tonne-miles.
We track our performance and report it publicly.