ACC Members Contributions to Sustainable Practices
The Nature Conservancy Teams with Dow To Integrate the Value of Nature into Business
Sustainability Challenge:
Communications and cooperation between industry and environmental groups is a valuable but sometimes underutilized tool for enhancing sustainability.
Chemistry Solution:
A collaboration between The Nature Conservancy and Dow demonstrates how integrating nature into business decisions can lead to better business and conservation outcomes.
Sustainability Benefit:
This collaboration has produced extensive research and developed new tools to demonstrate how a company like Dow can include nature in its business operations.
Based on the hypothesis that investing in nature will lead to conservation and business benefits, in January 2011,
Dow and
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) began a collaboration to integrate ecosystem services in the business decision-making process and generate business value while valuing nature.
The collaboration represents a major commitment from a large corporation to consider nature in nearly all of its business decisions, and TNC committed its time, resources and reputation to work closely with Dow.
The collaboration also led to Dow’s
Valuing Nature goal, part of the company’s 2025 Sustainability Goals. As a result of scientific, technical, and on-the-ground advisory assistance from The Nature Conservancy, Dow is on track to achieve its 2025 goal to identify $1 billion in business value from projects that are good for business and better for nature.
Success has come from extensive engagement at many levels – TNC committed scientific and leadership resources at both the corporate and local chapter levels to inspire and collaborate on projects that both help to protect nature and enhance Dow’s operations.
Together, The Nature Conservancy and Dow developed a Nature Valuation Methodology and tools to identify projects that may have a significant impact on nature using a three-pronged approach:
- A Nature Screen to help identify potential opportunities for nature projects
- An Ecosystem Services Identification and Inventory (ESII) tool to quickly and easily provide data about ecosystem services delivered by nature on a business site.
- A Nature Scorecard to validate a project’s effectiveness.
Results published in
peer-reviewed journal articles have helped build the business case for how companies can benefit from nature, as well as pioneer the methodology and new tools required to integrate nature in business decisions.
Between 2016 and 2018, Dow generated more than $270 million in validated business value from 57 valuing nature projects at Dow sites around the world. Examples of Nature Projects implemented include:
- Transforming an ash pond adjacent to a Dow plant set for closure along the Tittabawassee River in Michigan into a 23-acre wetland that improved habitat, restored ecological functions and improved water and air quality.
- Implementing a natural treatment process to improve seep water quality at a former mine site in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The team built a natural treatment process to improve the seep water quality before it enters a downstream creek. A sinuous channel lined with limestone redirects runoff while adding oxygen to water, helping to create a healthy environment for fish and plant life.
WTS Works with Chemical Manufacturers to Find Sustainable Materials Management Opportunities
Sustainability Challenge:
Manufacturing processes generate by-product materials that need to be managed responsibly and sustainably.
Chemistry Solution:
WTS, a by-product management services provider, works with chemical manufacturers to minimize or eliminate waste, recover value from by-products and divert waste from the landfill.
Sustainability Benefit:
Since 2010, WTS has helped chemical manufacturers divert 1 billion pounds of materials from landfills through sustainable recovery options.
With an ever-growing manufacturing sector creating products to help meet the needs of more than 7 billion people around the world, the amount of by-products generated in these processes is increasing the need for innovative resource and waste minimization and management strategies.
WTS, Inc., a
Responsible Care® Partner company, works with chemical manufacturers to implement management systems that use technologies and chemistry to minimize or eliminate waste and recover value from by-product and waste materials.
- Beneficial
Reuse: Reusing manufacturing by-products in a way that is economically and environmentally beneficial.
- Natural
Resource Preservation: Preserving resources by substituting alternative technologies to expressly continue sustainable use.
- Energy
from Waste: Creating energy in the form of electricity or heat from the thermal application of organic by-products.
- Recycling: Processing by-products into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials.
- Resource
Reclamation: Reclaiming resources from by-products that can be processed into a product of value.
In 2017, WTS’s collaboration with seven ACC member companies – BASF, Covestro, LANXESS, Lubrizol, PPG, Praxair and Vandemark – helped divert nearly 68 million pounds of manufacturing by-product materials from disposal. Overall, since 2010, WTS has worked with its customers to divert approximately
1 billion pounds of materials from landfill.
By 2020, when the earth's population has expanded to 9 billion people, WTS estimates it will have reached its goal of diverting
over 2 billion pounds of by-products from landfill to preserve natural resources and protect the environment.
Schneider Bulk Sustainability Practices Improve Fuel and Energy Efficiency
Sustainability Challenge:
Emissions from passenger vehicles and heavy-duty trucks can be a significant cause of air pollution.
Chemistry Solution:
Chemical transportation provider Schneider implements sustainability practices that have led to greater fuel efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced energy efficiency.
Sustainability Benefit:
By undertaking these sustainable practices, Schneider is reducing its carbon footprint and environmental impacts.
Between 1990 and 2013, freight transportation activity
grew by over 50 percent and is projected to nearly double again by 2040, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2013 alone, commercial motor vehicles in the United States
traveled 290 billion miles.
As the number of trucks on the road grows, so do concerns about air emissions from these vehicles, so freight transportation companies are identifying and implementing strategies to measure their environmental footprint and make sustainability advances.
Schneider, a bulk specialty chemical transportation provider, undertakes a range of practices that have led to improved fuel efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced facility energy efficiency.
Through investments in innovative equipment, driver education and training and operational efficiencies, Schneider has improved its fuel efficiency by 12.5 percent since 2008. Between 2016 and 2017, Schneider decreased fuel consumption by 500,000 gallons.
Schneider’s initiatives also include an increased reliance on renewable fuels – the fleet consumes more than 10 million gallons on blended biodiesel each year. Schneider is transitioning its entire fleet over to the latest EPA-compliant
clean-diesel emission engines, which will enable the company to increase fuel efficiency while also reducing emissions.
Schneider also implements energy-saving practices at its facilities; data center upgrades at headquarters in 2015 and 2017 reduced energy consumption by 25 percent, and lamp replacement at sites that began in 2014 have so far generated a 12.5 percent reduction in energy use.
As a result of these efforts, EPA has recognized Schneider with its
SmartWay Award of Excellence eight times since the award’s inception in 2005. The SmartWay program helps companies advance supply chain sustainability by measuring, benchmarking and improving freight transportation efficiency.
ACC Members go Beyond Regulations to Measure and Report EHS&S Performance
Sustainability Challenge:
Consumers and citizens may have questions about the safety and performance of a chemical company operating in their community.
Chemistry Solution:
ACC members must apply excellent practices and publicly report their environmental, health, safety and security performance.
Sustainability Benefit:
Chemical manufacturers are accountable to their communities, their employees and their customers and are driven to manage products and processes with safety and environmental protection as a top priority.
ACC members go above and beyond regulatory requirements to measure, manage and publicly report our environmental, health, safety and security performance.
ACC members drive their performance through established goals and adherence to policies, procedures and practices developed to improve performance over time. Together, this is called a
management system.
The Responsible Care Management System® is based on effective, proven practices used by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and provides a set of required elements to help companies assess impacts, set performance goals, develop internal processes to drive performance and share progress with the public.
In addition, all ACC members undergo certification audits to verify that a robust, effective management system is in place. Independent, accredited third-party auditors conduct these audits, which occur every three years at headquarters and multiple facility locations.
Finally, all ACC members publicly report
environmental, energy and safety performance data to track, validate, and improve performance over time.