The UK chemical industry has taken a step towards greater transparency by declaring it will publish social and environmental goals this summer.
The Chemical Industries Association has decided to state the goals in June after stakeholders made clear that they wanted the 180 member companies, which include BASF, Bayer, DuPont and ICI, to work to defined targets.
It has also made clear that the industry now believes it is better to expose itself to critical scrutiny than to risk getting things wrong on social and environmental matters in secret, and be pilloried as a result.
The association has promoted sustainability issues among its members since November 2000, when its Leadership Statement on sustainable development asked them to consider, among other things, ethical trading practices, diversity and work/life balance for employees.
The new goals will outline far more detailed targets up to 2010 and are likely to include aspirations to improve consultation with communities near chemical plants, and targets on human rights and workplace conditions. ‘We’ve always collected information on how our members perform, but what we’ve never said is what we are aiming for,’ says the association.
It set some environmental and health and safety targets in Responsible Care performance goals published in January 2003, such as a 50 per cent reduction in lost time injuries, an 11 per cent cut in energy use and a 25 per cent fall in the amount of hazardous waste produced between 2000 and 2010.
Progress will be reported annually, although the association admits some social goals will be ‘less quantifiable’.
However, all the targets, and those to be set this year, relate to the aggregate performance of the membership and progress made by individual companies will not be revealed.
Claudia Kruse, an SRI analyst at Isis Asset Management who specializes in the chemicals sector, welcomed this ‘important step towards greater transparency’, but added: ‘We would still expect individual companies to develop their own strategies, policies, management systems and targets and it would be beneficial if the industry as a whole could agree on common standards and methodologies to generate comparable data.’
Outgoing president Tony Bastock said the goals, to be drawn up by the association’s Reputation and Sustainable Development Group, are vital to the UK industry’s efforts to improve its reputation and maintain its licence to operate.
‘We know that some of the membership will see them and fear them, as hostages to fortune,’ he said. ‘We intend them to be challenging – they would be of little value if they were not – but we now accept that only by demonstrating real progress towards sustainability can we hope to achieve lasting improvement in our reputation.’
Dai Hayward, director of the chemicals company Thomas Swan and chairman of the association’s Responsible Care board, added: ‘We are well aware that there are potential pitfalls in setting performance goals, but our dialogue with stakeholders indicates that the benefits of openness are likely to outweigh the risks associated with failing to meet any goals that we set.’
The industry in the UK has yearly sales of £33billion ($58bn), and accounts for two per cent of gross domestic product.