Marc S. Reisch

C&EN Northeast News Bureau

Many large chemical corporations would say that rugged individualism is not their model for self-perpetuation. Sustainable development is. And as two of the world's largest chemical companies, DuPont and Dow Chemical, theorize about and adapt a concept of sustainable development to their needs, they have defined it in a way that attempts to encompass the interests of the communities in which their plants operate, as well as the interests of customers, employees, and shareholders.

Watershed Initiative Network restored this shallow-water habitat for shore birds at Fish Point State Game Area.

DuPont and Dow have taken positions on sustainable development that are noteworthy because of their size and influence in the industry and also because of the resources they can bring to putting theory into practice. Dow says it has put many sustainable development practices into place at Buna Sow Leuna Olefinverbund (BSL), the complex of three sites it has been rebuilding and developing in Germany in partnership with the German government. It is also taking a sort of "gestalt" approach to sustainable development as a major proponent in a program to develop and preserve vast natural wetlands resources in the Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network in Michigan. And DuPont claims it is putting sustainable development practices in place at its Spruance site in Richmond, Va.

Sustainable development—promoting growth and its advantages to society without depleting Earth's resources—is a concept just now coming into its own after nearly three decades of fitful progress toward such a notion. It is in part a response to environmental activists' objections to corporate manufacturing and business practices dating at least to the 1970s, when dioxin spills and use of the defoliant Agent Orange frightened and concerned many people. Further prompting from governments, research institutions, and the United Nations led corporate leaders to the realization that they needed to develop a business model for sustainable development. In 1987, the UN World Commission on Environment & Development called for businesses to endorse sustainable development efforts that "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Dow's BSL ethylene plant in Bohlen, Germany

Since then, organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva, have tried to bring business in line with an operating concept that begins, according to the council, with the notion that "three things are needed if sustainable development is to be achieved: economic growth, environmental balance, and social progress. The three are interdependent." The council, which has about 125 international corporate members from 30 countries, is not especially clear on just exactly how sustainable development is to be practiced because the application of the concept will vary from industry to industry and country to country.

For instance, the council points out in its 1998 annual review that "global systems of governance are essential to manage the transition toward more sustainable development, [whereas] the consequences for business of whether the world is governed through decentralized market mechanisms or via a centralized command-and-control approach are huge. Market forces are gaining ground in most parts of society, but we cannot be certain that this trend will continue. And if it does, the question arises as to how markets can be made to function in a more sustainable way."

Scott Peach and Larry Lynch release a great horned owl.

Closer to home in the U.S., the President's Council on Sustainable Development has a number of "takes" on the subject. It asserts that "economic, environmental, and social problems cannot be addressed in isolation. Economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social equity need to be pursued simultaneously." The President's council says it believes that "the adversarial nature of the current system precludes solutions that become possible when potential adversaries cooperate and collaborate." Furthermore, the council also endorses the notion that "science, economics, and societal values should be considered in making decisions." Council members include high-ranking U.S. government, environmental, and industry representatives.

John Elkington, chairman of SustainAbility, a London-based consulting group on environmental strategies for business, points out that "corporations are often better placed to take over the world than they are to run it sustainably once in control." But he maintains that sustainable development is "a core challenge for governments and for globalizing capitalism." He predicts that the coming years "will see a growing focus on the roles of chief executive officers, chief financial officers, boards, and the financial markets they try to satisfy in the sustainability transition."

Acknowledging Elkington's predictions, both Dow and DuPont have taken seriously the policy efforts of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and those of the President's council. Assuming a proactive stance, Dow Chemical President and CEO William S. Stavropoulos says, "We, too, must integrate elements that historically have been seen as at odds with one another: the triple bottom line of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental needs." Indeed, because Dow and other chemical industry companies are not perceived by investors as sustainable companies, "the lower multiples our companies experience on trading floors indicate that our investors have doubts about our long-term growth and sustainability."

Stavropoulos

In fact, the concept of sustainable development may be just the ticket to reposition the chemical industry. Stavropoulos says, "For too long we have suffered from a collective crisis of confidence. We have allowed others to define us to the world rather than to define ourselves and to affirm our rightful place in society."

Even more to the point is Dow Chairman Frank Popoff's contention that "business today is becoming an increasingly dominant part of our lives locally and globally." Along with governments' authority being "under challenge around the world, the resulting societal vacuum is more and more being filled by private enterprise. Business is proving that with the cooperation of other interested segments of society, it can achieve dual objectives of commercial and societal progress. They need not be mutually exclusive."

For DuPont's chairman and CEO, Charles (Chad) O. Holliday Jr., sustainable development takes on much the same warm glow that it does for Dow. "Our sustainability is more related to our commitment to core values of safety, environmental stewardship, ethics, and the fair treatment of people," says Holliday, who was just elected chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Holliday
Photo by Carol T. Powers

Seeking DuPont's salvation in part through biotechnology, Holliday envisions a promising future in which "biological processes use renewable resources as feedstocks, use solar energy to drive growth, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, use low-temperature and low-pressure processes, and produce waste that is less toxic." DuPont is studying the use of "green plants" as mini-factories for chemicals in which a "bio-silk" could be made. The future may also include microbes programmed to manufacture chemicals, monomers, and polymers not from oil but "from different nutrient feedstocks." DNA could be the basis for the manufacture of "smaller electronic devices than currently possible."

Holliday says that public fear over the use of biotechnology, particularly for the development of new foods, will not be swept aside (see page 73). "This public concern has been aggravated by the perception that we in industry have often acted as though public fears are not legitimate and are the result of ignorance. Whether this perception is real or not, the point is that we in industry must do a better job of engaging, listening to, and addressing the concerns of all stakeholders in this global debate. One of the first things we must do is acknowledge concerns about unknown risks."

Charting DuPont's conversion to a sustainable development model, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Dennis H. Reilley says, "We went from a mind-set that said environmental performance was defined by external regulations to a fuller perspective that says environmental performance is part of an all-encompassing internal drive toward true sustainable growth."

For many industrial companies, "the creation of value is still linked to the throughput of materials and increased pounds of production made possible by the expenditure of large amounts of energy in the form of fossil fuels," Reilley explains. "A sustainable growth company, by contrast, builds value for shareholders and society while decreasing its environmental footprint. It sees the marketplace and civil society as integral to business decisions, not as external entities that we simply interact with. And it fulfills the needs of a growing world population using the best and most advanced forms of modern technology while minimizing risk and environmental impact."

While Dow's and DuPont's executives are busy articulating their vision of sustainable development in the 21st century, current plant manufacturing practice is limited mostly to adapting state-of-the-art technology to products and processes that have been around for a while. Dow and DuPont have also endorsed kinder and gentler land-management practices at their plant sites to minimize the environmental impact of their operations both inside and outside plant fences. The coexistence of nature habitats and parks on and within industrial sites is a visible result of environmental management practices intended to prove sustainable development. Practitioners of sustainable development now see efforts to consult community advisory panels—a feature of the chemical industry's Responsible Care program—as part of the effort to engage communities and reach mutual understanding.

Regarding Dow and the development of BSL properties in Germany, Dow had an opportunity "to think more broadly and for the long term," says Dow spokeswoman Marina L. Ashanin. The sites needed "extensive restructuring." Dow acquired 80% of BSL from the German government's privatization agency in 1995 and is likely to buy the remaining 20% share next year. The agency has provided billions of dollars for site cleanup and redevelopment. Although Dow has committed considerably less in funding for the site repair, it has developed plans and brought in technology to both clean up and redevelop the multiplant complex, which is more than 60 years old.

BSL has three locations: the Schkopau site in the state of Saxony-Anhalt; Leuna, also in Saxony-Anhalt; and Böhlen in Saxony. The sites were oversized, parts were decrepit, and they needed cleanup and technology upgrades. Therefore, redevelopment "was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to think of how a site is organized," Ashanin says. Although "we couldn't exactly go back to square one because the infrastructure and footprint of the three plants were already established, the redevelopment effort stimulated creative thinking," she says.

Redevelopment of BSL also fits the government agenda to help provide a stable economic base for the Halle/Leipzig region of Germany. Before the Berlin Wall came down and East Germany was integrated with West Germany, BSL employed 25,000 people. Today BSL employs closer to 2,500. But those numbers are misleading, Ashanin points out. The 25,000 included people the company employed: schoolteachers, shopkeepers, nursery workers, and the like.

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Dow's work to help make the BSL sites economically viable provides a solid economic base for the region, Ashanin says. Suppliers and contractors will ultimately account for additional jobs directly attributable to the operation of the BSL complex. The steady jobs at ethylene, polyethylene, butadiene, aniline, acrylic acid, and other units run by Dow not only help fuel local demand for a variety of goods and services that Dow needs, but also support businesses that attend to the daily needs of employees and contractors working for Dow. "Every chemical industry job at BSL creates four additional jobs in the region," Ashanin says. Thus the 2,500 jobs directly associated with the BSL sites create an additional 10,000 jobs in the region.

Another feature of the redevelopment of BSL is the establishment of a "ValuePark" at the Schkopau site. Scott D. Noesen, Dow's director of employee health and safety, says that "the ValuePark concept locates people down the value chain in our facility. We also provide employee health and safety services to park tenants and minimize distribution costs" of material some may source from Dow or sell to Dow. The ValuePark design thus shortens transportation of materials and preserves fuel that would otherwise go to transportation.

The ValuePark currently has six resident companies using the existing BSL infrastructure. They include European Vinyls; Ravago, a Belgium-based plastics recycling and compounding company; Kurotec, a German maker of fiberglass-reinforced composites; Hoyer, a German transportation and logistics company; Manuli, an Italian stretch-film maker; and Pasec, a Belgium-based maker of wooden pallets and packaging materials. "We are talking to others about investing in the ValuePark," Ashanin says.

The ValuePark now has 150 acres within Schkopau available for use. Current ValuePark tenants occupy just under half of the area within Schkopau, Ashanin says.

The BSL sites do not include a nature preserve, but the Schkopau site does include a park integrated with the facility's water treatment plant. Dow invites schoolchildren and community residents to see the facility operation and visit the park, Ashanin says. The wastewater facility is only the most visible illustration of the remediation efforts at the site.

Harry Spaas, BSL site remediation leader, says that about 90% of contaminated soil has been cleaned up using thermal and biological methods and landfill to dispose of hard-to-treat soil. Plants operating at BSL sites have either been built or revamped with primary and secondary containment systems to protect against any spill going any farther than the plant itself. What Dow has done is to "recycle the area" for industrial use, Spaas says. It is an effort comparable to efforts in the U.S. to return brownfields—or abandoned industrial sites—to productive use. Reuse is "more sensible than greenfield development," Spaas says, because it preserves pristine environments.

Within the bird and wildlife sanctuary, Pat Robbins helps check a nest box

A broader effort to extend sustainable development into plant communities is also under way nearer to Dow headquarters at Midland, Mich. In 1996, Dow helped start up the Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network. Aided by the Chicago-based Conservation Fund, the network is an attempt to "connect people, resources, organizations, and programs" in a way that "considers opportunities to better link the economic, social, and environmental well-being of Saginaw Bay communities in order to sustain and improve the overall quality of life in the region," says Diane Demers, network project coordinator. To date about $340,000 from Dow and other community foundations has been directed to community-developed projects that include wetland restorations, construction of wildlife viewing platforms, and a project to measure local river-water contaminants.

Aerial view of DuPont's Spruance Plant in Richmond, Va.
Photo by Bill Harrison

The network initiative is an attempt to take sustainable development outside the plant fence and "underscores how Dow cares about the communities in which it operates," says Jerold E. Ring, director of global contributions and community programs for Dow. Ring says that this Dow effort is not just another form of community public relations. It is part and parcel of Dow's understanding of the social, economic, and environmental advantages of sustainable development projects. In such efforts, he says, "business must lead for it to work. When business commits to a project, it gets done."

The network works with local government and community groups and funds the projects they believe are most important, Ring says. For Dow, such sustainable development projects help to build a foundation of "collaboration where a regulatory framework promotes disagreement and confrontation." Undertakings like the Saginaw network are "the most powerful form of outreach. It keeps people at the table, including people we have typically disagreed with," Ring says. Dow is exploring the possibility of helping a similar project get under way near its Freeport, Texas, plant and is "committed to exporting the approach to another country" in the near future.

DuPont has made an effort to apply sustainable development principles at its Spruance site just on the edge of Richmond, Va. Spruance is now the largest DuPont facility in terms of employees—2,700. An additional 800 contract employees also work on the site. "Most DuPont plants today have no more than 600 to 700 employees at the site," says Michael Mayberry, plant manager.

Mayberry

The company purchased the 550-acre site, a plantation, in 1927. In 1929, the company began manufacturing cellophane and rayon in Spruance, though it hasn't manufactured those products there since the 1950s. The site now manufactures Zytel nylon polymers, Mylar coated polyester films, Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) fibers, Tyvek spun-bonded olefin film, Kevlar (p-aramid) fibers, and Nomex (m-aramid) fibers. Also here are applications research for aramid fiber development formerly at the Chestnut Run research facility in Wilmington, Del.

Renewing the site, says Robert L. Dunn, DuPont environmental affairs manager for Virginia, has not only included upgrades to the facility to accommodate the products now manufactured on site, but it has also included closure in the mid-1990s of DuPont's old steam-generating facility there. The coal-burning facility has been replaced by a new unit adjacent to DuPont's facility and operated by Charlotte, N.C.-based Cogentrix Energy. The new steam unit has state-of-the-art environmental controls, Dunn says, including the scrubbers that the old DuPont powerhouse did not have. The new unit "has been a boon to the environment," Dunn says. Air emissions at the site have been reduced 79% from 1987 to the present, even as product volume at the site increased 40%, he says.

Dunn

A tour of the plant includes views not only of clay-lined aeration lagoons for treated plant water, but also of bluebird nesting boxes in wooded areas in the bird and wildlife sanctuary DuPont maintains along the site perimeter. Sulfuric acid, a by-product of Kevlar manufacture, is treated here with aragonite and yields gypsum, sold as a soil conditioner to area peanut farmers, and carbon dioxide, captured and sold to area soft-drink manufacturers. Also captured and purified for plant reuse is the N-methylpyrrolidone solvent used for Kevlar manufacture.

A new Teflon fiber manufacturing process going into place at the site will eliminate the need for raw material carbon disulfide, a workforce hazard, Dunn says. "About 60,000 lb of carbon disulfide has been released annually into the environment from the plant. By 2000, releases will be zero," Dunn says. DuPont had used chlorine to treat water from the nearby James River for plant use, but it no longer does so. In its place, DuPont now uses sodium hypochlorite. Another 12,000 lb of perchloroethylene and 10,000 lb of carbon tetrachloride had been used and disposed of from the plant in the past, but now the use of those products has been eliminated as well, he says.

Diane H. Gulyas, vice president and general manager of the DuPont Kevlar, Nomex, and Teflon fibers businesses, says the plant fulfills its role as a plant run according to sustainable development principles. The Cogentrix powerhouse and on-site water treatment facilities are examples of DuPont's role in minimizing its facilities' environmental footprint. The plant is economically viable because the products it sells are profitable and give shareholders a return on their investment.

Gulyas

And the plant fulfills its social responsibility because the products it supplies offer social benefits, Gulyas explains. Among the benefits the plants' products offer are Kevlar fibers used in vests and helmets that protect the lives of U.S. military, police, and correction-facility workers against bullet and knife wounds; Nomex fibers used in coats that protect firefighters from heat injury and used in gloves that protect foundry industry workers; and Teflon fibers that can be woven into socks that do not chafe and thus do not form hard-to-heal sores on diabetes sufferers' feet. Other social benefits the plant provides include encouragement of employee involvement in community organizations. And DuPont aids community education efforts through the donation of $250,000 to an environmental learning center in Richmond, Gulyas says.

Efforts to reach community residents go through the Community Advisory Panel that Dunn set up. It meets periodically to review topics such as Y2K issues—potential computer software problems in the year 2000—and worst-case scenarios—what could happen if an accident occurred. "Our decision to eliminate the use of chlorine was the result of discussions with our panel," Dunn says.

With the Spruance plant as an example, DuPont Chairman Holliday can declare that his company "is on a journey to become a sustainable growth company, one that creates increasing shareholder and societal value while reducing its environmental footprint—what many refer to as environmental impact."

Dow Chemical is on a similar path. But Dow President Stavropoulos knows it will be some time before Dow and the chemical industry succeed, if ever, in taking a controlling hand in the debate over whether the chemical industry is or can become a truly sustainable industry. He asks, "Are we doing everything we can to demonstrate that our industry creates wealth by constantly regenerating itself? Are we doing everything to demonstrate that our products raise living standards, improve the quality of life, and are safe? . . . I would contend that the answer is 'no.' Surveys of our constituents show that we are not held in highest regard, and our credibility suffers."

If anyone can achieve sustainability, it is Dow and DuPont with their enormous resources, enlightened leadership, and commitment. But to make it work, thousands of other, smaller companies will have to follow their lead, working out the details in ways that make sense for them and for their communities. No one believes the task will be easy. But if they succeed, it will be the chemical industry's best opportunity in the 21st century to permanently change the reality and the perception of this much-beleaguered but vitally important industry.

[Millennial Musings Page 9][Feeding The World]

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