| Sustainable Development Principles |
| Articulate and endorse a set of Sustainable Development Principles building on the current Responsible Care® Guiding Principles. |
 Completed: 2000 |
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| Refine Dow's Sustainable Development Measurements |
| Develop a global set of measurements to evaluate business performance and monitor progress of each global business against economic, environmental and social goals. |
Completed: 2000 |
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| Sustainable Development and New Businesses |
| Integrate Sustainable Development Guiding Principles into the strategic planning process through New Businesses – the global business unit where new commercial and technology opportunities are identified. |
Completed: 2000 |
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| Heighten Product Stewardship Efforts Globally |
| To reach 100 percent implementation of Responsible Care globally, we will accelerate our Product Stewardship efforts in developing countries. |
Completed: 2000 |
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| People |
| We will communicate Dow's People Strategy to all employees globally and have it intergrated into all Business Strategies and all Functional and Geographic Plans. |
Completed: 2002 |
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| Advocacy |
| We will incorporate a review screen into our advocacy process for ensuring that Dow's approach is consistent with our Sustainable Development Principles. |
Completed: 2002 |
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| Six Sigma |
| Six Sigma will deliver $1.5 billion in EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) cumulatively from the combined impact of revenue growth, cost reductions and asset utilization. |
Completed: 2002 |
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| Balanced Scorecard |
| To bring more balance into how we measure our success and progress on the integration of the Triple Bottom Line, Dow will launch a Balanced Scorecard. |
Completed: 2002 |
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| Community |
| A best practice process will be in place for dialogue with community leaders at our largest sites to begin a sustainable community visioning process that includes a plan for accomplishing specific Dow and Community goals. |
Completed: 2003 |
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| Dialogue |
We will formalize our principles and process for external stakeholder engagement, which will allow businesses, functions and sites to incorporate external inputs in their decision-making process.
During 2003 we developed Dow’s strategy, principles, and process for external stakeholder engagement. Our strategy highlights the value of dialogue with stakeholders and our commitments to principles and values. It calls for enhancement of our existing dialogue processes to achieve more and better dialogue. It also calls for a strategic focus on dialogue with NGOs seeking solutions to issues of mutual interest.
We carried out internal and external validation exercises to refine and endorse these documents. Internally, a series of focus groups that involved NGO relationship leaders, geographic public policy, the Sustainable Development Advisory Council, and business leaders helped to achieve clarity and consensus. The Sustainable Development Steering Group and the Public Policy Leadership Team provided the final endorsements. We achieved external validation with the cooperation of the Corporate Environmental Advisory Council (CEAC) and other key individuals.
Our focus groups concluded that new principles for dialogue were not needed. Many of the principles that Dow already has in place are directly applicable to our conduct of dialogue and relationships with external stakeholders. We have therefore documented the ways in which these existing principles guide our external engagement efforts.
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Completed: 2003 |
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| Solutions Development |
Sustainable Development principles and key probing questions will be an integral part of Dow’s decision-making process for developing and commercializing technology.
Develop and Commercialize Technology (D&CT) is the multifunctional discipline used by Dow to evaluate, develop, and implement new products, processes, services, applications, line extensions, and strategic alliances. This work process uses a stage-gate approach and includes the participation of research and development, marketing, financial, environmental/health, and manufacturing functions.
The D&CT process was revised in 2003 to more formally incorporate Sustainable Development principles and key probing questions into the guidelines and decision screens.
As a result of a question on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, we recently conducted a review of all of our businesses to determine the sales over the last five years that have resulted from eco-efficiency improvements. We used the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) definition of Green Chemistry as our guide for reporting by the businesses:
"Green chemistry is the use of chemistry for pollution prevention. More specifically, green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that are more environmentally benign."
Some more-specific criteria applicable to Dow included the following:
- Processes derived or partially derived from renewable resources
- Product or process development aimed at increasing material intensity, decreasing waste, decreasing water consumption, or decreasing energy consumption without otherwise adversely affecting environmental performance
- Research designed to recover or recycle products within a production system, again, without otherwise adversely affecting environmental performance
The final summary indicated just over 15 percent of sales in the last five years can be attributed to "greener chemistry." |
Completed: 2003 |
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| Sustainable Development (SD) Workshops |
| We will expand SD workshops to more businesses. During these meetings business leaders analyze the gaps between current performance and a defined set of metrics, and develop plans to improve performance. |
Completed: 2003 |
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