Dow's regional president Tony Frencham says the company's sustainability goals have gone through three stages of evolution.
Frencham told Footprint that in the mid-1990s the company set environment, health and safety goals for 2005 that were very ambitious but were focused largely on reducing the impact of its own sites.
The goals for 2015 had a wider remit, and also aimed to reduce the impact of the transport, use and disposal of the company's products.
It's latest goals, for 2025, are even more 'big picture', and are focused on the global challenge of providing for "nine billion people in a healthy and sustainable way", he said.
Competing for talent
Frencham added that a good record on sustainability had become crucial for companies as they compete against each other for talented managers and staff.
"Now, when I do interviews with prospective employees, I am no longer interviewing them, they are interviewing me," he said.
They are working out "whether the Dow brand is good enough to attach to them", he said.
That is a positive development "because it forces us to recognise that people aren't just turning up each day to get a wage. They also want to feel good about what they are doing", he said.
Frencham was in Canberra yesterday for the launch of Dow’s sustainability program report prepared in conjunction with the US Studies Centre at Sydney University.
The report is the culmination of a six-year program that focused on key sustainability challenges facing Australia and the US, including alternative fuels, soil carbon, groundwater and urban environments.
Frencham noted that Australian companies appear to be less willing than their international peers to form alliances with their peers, environment groups and governments.
But "you just can't do everything yourself anymore", he said, adding that cooperation with supply chain partners was particularly important.
"We don't any more have national supply chains, it is all global supply chains now," he said.
"And the companies that are winning are being excellent at what they do and then they are plugging into partners up and down the supply chain."
Dow sustainability program report 2010-2016 (Dow and US Studies Centre, September 2016)
