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By 2025, Dow Expects to Generate $1B by Valuing Natural, Human Capital

The Dow Chemical Company announced today a strategic set of commitments designed to redefine the role of business in society. Dow says its 2025 Sustainability Goals use a global lens to magnify the Company’s impact around the world, driving unprecedented collaborations to develop a societal blueprint that will facilitate the transition to a sustainable planet and society.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 9 years ago | About a 4 minute read

Through harnessing Dow’s innovation strengths, global reach, and dedicated employee population, the Company has set bold and aggressive sustainability targets designed to develop breakthrough product innovations, positively impact the lives of 1 billion people, and deliver $1 billion in cost savings or new cash flow for the Company by valuing nature in business decisions and advancing a circular economy.

“Our 2025 Sustainability Goals will help redefine the role of business at its intersection with society,” said Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive officer. “They will be our guide as we work to improve the well-being of humanity with solutions that are good for business and good for the world.”

Dow’s seven 2025 Sustainability Goals are as follows:

Developing a blueprint for a sustainable world — Dow leads in developing a societal blueprint that integrates public policy solutions, science and technology, and value chain innovation to facilitate the transition to a sustainable world. To develop the blueprint, Dow will engage in 100 significant dialogues across the public and private sector and establish 10 new collaborations. The initial blueprint will be published year-end 2017 and will be updated throughout the goal time frame, considering world progress towards sustainability and emerging challenges.
Delivering breakthrough innovations — By 2025, Dow aims for its portfolio of sustainable chemistry innovations will have a six-fold net positive impact on sustainable development: Dow products will offset three times more carbon dioxide, and save three times more energy, than they emit throughout their life cycle.
Advancing a circular economy — By 2025, Dow will work with other industry leaders, non-profit organizations and governments to deliver six major projects that facilitate the world’s transition to a circular economy, where waste is designed into new products (such as Dow's recent pilot program turning plastic waste into fuel) and services.
Valuing nature — Through its long-term collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, Dow has developed a business decision process that quantifies the value of nature, which will deliver business value and natural capital value through projects that are good for the Company as well as ecosystems. Dow predicts it will generate $1 billion by 2025 in the form of cost savings or new cash flow as measured by net present value, a measure of future cash flows discounted to the present day.
Increasing confidence in chemical technology — Dow says it will increase confidence in the safe use of chemical technology through transparency, dialogue, unprecedented collaboration, research and its actions. By 2025, Dow will work with non-profit, businesses and government partners to develop new, cutting-edge predictive modeling capabilities and integrate them into 100 percent of its new product assessments. The Company will also improve on the understanding of chemistry’s potential and will develop and implement new predictive modeling capabilities.
Engaging employees for impact — By 2025, Dow says its employees worldwide will apply their talents to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people. Dow employees will give 600,000 hours to support students and teachers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, and complete 700 volunteer sustainability projects around the world.
World-leading operations performance — By 2025, Dow has committed to reducing its freshwater intake intensity at key water-stressed sites and its waste intensity footprint by 20 percent. It will also obtain 400 megawatts of its power demand from renewable sources and strive to eliminate unplanned safety events.