At the American
Chemistry Council's annual Responsible Care conference in
Miami last month, plans to institute third-party verification
audits took center stage as an essential tool in the industry's
new reputation initiative.
With a new ACC-sponsored website-- http://www.responsiblecare-us.com
--to showcase industry performance and plans to go ahead with
a $20 million advertising initiative, third-party verification
is more important than ever, ACC officials said, and an important
stop on the road to mending fences with the public.
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Keeth
PHOTO BY TERI BLOOM |
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In her address to about 400 conference attendees, Fran Keeth, chairman
of the ACC board committee on Responsible Care, acknowledged that
after nearly 16 years of Responsible Care, many people still view
the chemical industry with disdain. "We need to be seen as a provider
of solutions," she said.
To change public perception, Keeth, who is president and chief
executive officer of Shell
Chemical, said the industry must bring its message to customers,
governments, neighbors, and nongovernmental organizations. The
long-awaited "essential2"-themed advertising initiative
that the ACC board of directors authorized at the end of April
"will focus on the benefits of our products; it will advance our
participation in a variety of discussions around public health
and science, and it will focus on our performance."
Responsible Care will play a key role in the initiative, Keeth
told the audience. Also playing an important part are related
ACC commitments to the Long-Range
Research Initiative and the high-production-volume testing
agreement. LRI is an international chemical industry effort to
fund independent third-party research on chemical exposure. The
HPV program is another international chemical industry effort
to conduct a battery of toxicological tests on 2,800 heavily used
chemicals.
These initiatives are "essential to our future growth strategy,"
Keeth said. "Companies that perform better and tell their story
effectively are more likely to be welcomed as valued business
partners and responsible citizens."
AUDITS OF Responsible Care management practices
are now a condition of membership. Firms have to hire and engage
third-party verifiers to complete audits of headquarter operations
by December of next year. Next, company sites must come under
scrutiny no later than 2007.
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Dicciani
HONEYWELL PHOTO |
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But not all of a company's sites are subject to scrutiny in this
first round of mandatory Responsible Care inspections. For instance,
firms that operate at 25 or fewer locations are only required to
verify 33% of sites up to a maximum of four. They can pay for more,
but they must meet the minimum site inspection requirements.
Larger firms must subject themselves to more inspections. Those
that operate 26 to 40 sites must verify at least six. Firms that
operate at more than 40 locations have to verify at least eight.
Some environmental managers at the conference grumbled over
the swiftly approaching deadlines and complained that they needed
more assistance to help them prepare for audits. At a session
to discuss the preparation of Responsible Care management system
guides, a few attendees were dismayed that the many templates,
manuals, and training programs to help them are only now starting
to come out.
Thomas P. Kunes, a principal with Kestrel
Management Services, said that Responsible Care management
systems training material his firm is preparing will not be completed
until 2006. He explained that ACC and the Synthetic
Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association had hired Kestrel
only in January. SOCMA members will have it easier, as at this
point their group only requires headquarters certification in
December 2006.
In her address, Keeth nevertheless encouraged ACC members to
press ahead with preparations for third-party audits. "If auditing
is done correctly, it can be a valuable tool. It helps us understand
where we can improve processes and step up performance one more
notch," she said.
Exhibitors at the meeting included many companies that were
prepared to audit ACC members, consult on systems verification,
provide software to ensure compliance, or conduct third-party
verifications. Those verifiers were prepared to inspect firms
under ACC's Responsible Care Management Systems scheme or under
an alternative standard that overlays Responsible Care on the
International
Organization for Standardization's ISO 14001 environmental
certification system.
ACC OFFICIALS tried to assure attendees that
their verification efforts would ultimately help their companies'
and the industry's reputation. But they didn't sugarcoat the task
ahead. Stephen Gardner, an ACC communications director, told attendees
something they already know well. "We haven't done a good job
defining ourselves. Others have done it. We see 10 negative stories
about us in the press for every positive story. Industry silence
is reflected in high regulatory costs," he said.
On the positive side, he said ACC-sponsored surveys found that
people aren't close-minded when it comes to the chemical industry.
In a study conducted in 2002 by the opinion survey firm Worthlin
Worldwide, more than 60% of the public said the benefits of the
industry outweigh the drawbacks, Gardner reported. The same study
found that 86% of people surveyed were open to learning more about
the industry.
Phrasing his findings a little differently, Jeff Erikson of
SustainAbility, a
London-based corporate responsibility consulting firm, said most
people view the chemical industry as "a necessary evil." Discussing
a survey of Responsible Care his firm conducted, Erikson said
that although people admire the industry's technical expertise,
they are troubled by its lack of transparency and accountability
and its failure to use common metrics.
The view of the industry as a necessary evil is "partly our
fault," said Gregori Lebedev, who recently resigned as ACC president
after about a year and a half in the job. "We need to market our
business. We're not trying to turn people into chemists. But we
need to give them what they need to understand our business."
For members of the public who wish to track the industry's
health, safety, and environmental practices, ACC debuted its Responsible
Care website. According to Debra Phillips, Responsible Care team
leader, the website offers the public one-stop access to industry-
and company-specific statistics and data.
Under the environment tab, the site offers 14 years of industry
data on toxics release emissions reported annually to the government
through 2001--the latest year available. The site offers five
years of individual company data. The security tab offers assurances
on certification but no data on the status of individual companies'
certification status. The website promises to offer data on greenhouse
gas emissions and energy efficiency statistics next year.
In the case of company-specific environmental data, viewers
can click on highlighted data when firms wish to clarify their
information. Keeth says ACC members wanted this option because
"there are vast differences between companies because of the different
businesses they are in."
The website is "industry's attempt to embrace transparency.
Rather than be the subject of other people's analysis, we want
to supply the basic statistics for our conversations with environmentalists
and others," said Terry F. Yosie, ACC vice president of Responsible
Care.
JUST AS THE Responsible Care conclave wound
down, ACC's second annual Long-Range Research Initiative meeting
got under way. In a joint session of the two groups, Nance K.
Dicciani, Honeywell Specialty
Materials' CEO and chairman of the board committee for LRI,
said: "If we allow chemical products to harm the environment or
human health, their benefits will be short-lived. If we allow
products to be banned because of unscientific fears, then we fail
as an industry."
ACC, she pointed out, has invested about $106 million in LRI
since it started in 1999. The program has attracted $12 million
in government and other joint funding and has resulted in 124
projects, of which 56 have been completed. LRI has so far produced
280 peer-reviewed publications.
LRI's main goal is to fund improved methods in evaluating the
risks of chemicals to the public and environment. Dicciani expects
that the independent research that ACC funds will develop "sound
science," and so help set appropriate health policies, reduce
public fear of chemicals, and aid in bringing safer products to
market faster.
In a separate interview with C&EN, Dicciani emphasized
that LRI aims to develop widely applicable analytical methods
that can ensure reproducible results from one lab to another.
Looking at the impact of chemicals in living systems is particularly
difficult. Children, smokers, drinkers, and the elderly may be
more or less susceptible to the effects of a given substance.
LRI hopes to provide some insight into dealing with these complexities
as well, she said.
The presence of synthetic chemicals in parts per billion in
human and animal tissue has alarmed some people, Dicciani told
the ACC audience. LRI should be an aid in better understanding
the importance and relevance of biomonitoring data.
The answers will be important, Dicciani said, because, "we
want to ensure that the next generation of regulatory policies
are informed and prudent." She emphasized that the answers--along
with third-party verification, the new ACC website, and other
Responsible Care initiatives--are essential to the industry's
survival.
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