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Corporate Environmental Advisory Council
All members of our Corporate Environmental Advisory Council (CEAC) had the opportunity to provide comments to Dow on drafts of our 2003 Public Report. As one might expect from such a diverse group, we received a diverse set of responses, including...
"The Company's continued commitment to undertaking voluntary reporting and moving slowly, but steadily towards a Triple Bottom Line report deserves our admiration and applause. The Report contains many state-of-the-art elements – most notably its reporting of greenhouse gases and its adoption of the GRI Guidelines. It is, deservedly, amongst the better (though not the best) of those reports produced by the larger companies. But, there is still a very long way to go before the Report satisfies the Company's own claims for 'transparency and accountability.' The Company must directly address issues of completeness and accountability in its reporting. The Report needs to address, especially, the essential conflict arising from, on the one hand, being a massive, quoted multinational company in pursuit of profit in an economically hostile world and, on the other, the demands for: a shrinking ecological footprint, the highest standards of morality, and the protection and respect for the vulnerable and the dispossessed. Capitalism has shown itself to be a highly capable system in many ways – it is, however, unable to deliver these essentials to human progress without considerable control from society."
Rob Gray, Professor and Director
Center for Social and Environmental Accounting Research
Glasgow University
"Dow deserves great credit for putting its cards on the table and describing the key elements that define its sustainability journey. Dow continues to set the bar for the systematic engagement of stakeholders about pressing strategy questions.
In this draft report, Dow has defined key principles and developed a framework and processes for reaching out. Substantively, the major challenge for Dow clearly lies in achieving the true integration of Sustainable Development considerations into product development and manufacturing, sales, and marketing (product stewardship). In areas like new product development, green chemistry, climate, energy, and water, Dow is asking the right questions and has the opportunity to educate us all on the challenges of truly integrating sustainability into its operations. (Six Sigma is a good example.) Dow needs to be as direct as possible in describing these challenges, because the journey is not easy and others will benefit from Dow's insights.
Sustainable Development strategy is clearly a 'work in progress.' Nonetheless, Dow is to be commended for its forthright efforts to improve and to continue to invite both constructive challenge and public support when appropriate as it proceeds on this difficult and important path."
F. Henry Habicht, II
CEO of Global Environment & Technology Foundation
"The 2003 Public Report is an honest representation of what Dow has achieved during its 10 years of deliberate effort to improve the sustainability of its operations. It shows impressive progress in some of the areas chosen for attention and measurement, and tendencies to stagnation in the advance in other areas. Importantly, the Report demonstrates that it helps to focus corporate attention on selected issues.
The weakness of the Report is, of course, those areas not yet chosen for special attention and follow up. Even if some of those areas are speculative and hard to measure, the Report would have gained from including a section listing the major, not yet addressed sustainability challenges seen by Dow management.
I expect that Dow's new set of sustainability goals, advertised for the 10-year period starting 2006, will contain a broader scope of measures and inspire progress in new areas where Dow has undesirable impact."
Jorgen Randers, PhD
Professor of Policy Analysis
Norwegian School of Management
"At a most fundamental level, it is reassuring to an outsider that Dow sees a direct link between its Corporate Mission of 'improving life' and the principles of sustainability. This is the best guarantee of continued and proactive corporate commitment to these principles. Plentiful case studies demonstrate that Dow not only tries to 'walk the talk,' but also succeeds in exciting ways. Dow's efforts to follow GRI reporting guidelines are laudable, and I am impressed that Dow is already reporting on 77 out of 92 criteria. The best news of all is evidence of improved systems thinking. For an innovative chemical company whose products and processes join so many of the earth's systems, this is the most important intellectual virtue to have.
I disagree with the claim that almost all the challenges and dilemmas Dow faces today are legacy issues. In particular, I find the discussion of dioxin disappointing. The goal of reducing dioxin emissions from global operations by 90 percent is definitely commendable and progress towards this goal worth reporting. However, the truth is that the chlorine chemistry industry, although directly responsible for only three percent of emissions from quantified sources, stands indirectly at the cradle of a percentage (who knows how large) of the emissions from uncontrolled burning, which the EPA lists as the greatest concern. These statistics encourage myopic blindness if not accompanied by information reporting goals and progress towards reducing dioxin formation in end-of-life incineration."
L. Mariette Hovy-van Wensveen, PhD
Associate Professor Emerita, Department of Theological Studies
Loyola Marymount University
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