Chemistry, Materials & Packaging
Dow Celebrates Achieving 2015 Goals, Looks Ahead to 2025 in New Sustainability Report

On Monday, The Dow Chemical Company released its 2015 Sustainability Report, culminating Dow’s decade-long 2015 Sustainability Goals, which centered on producing solutions to global challenges including the areas of food, water and energy and continuing its commitment to operational excellence. Prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 Guidelines, the report highlights the successes of Dow’s 2015 goals, and also outlines its 2025 Sustainability Goals and commitment to redefine the role of business at its intersection with society.

Overall, Dow’s 2015 goals resulted in significant, quantifiable improvements for the Company in personal safety, environmental performance and economic value creation. Dow upped the ante last year with the launch of its 2025 Sustainability Goals — its third set of 10-year goals. The 2025 Goals serve as the next chapter in Dow’s sustainability journey and as such, the Company has assumed a leadership role in developing societal blueprints that integrate public policy solutions, science and technology, and value chain innovation to facilitate the transition to a more sustainable planet and society.

“Our 2015 Sustainability Goals focused on expanding our efforts into products and solutions that helped our customers and the world to save energy, grow better food, and create clean water supplies without losing sight of our operational footprint,” said Dr. Neil Hawkins, corporate VP and Chief Sustainability Officer. “Over the next decade, we will continue to reduce our own operational ‘footprint,’ deliver ever-increasing value to customers and society through our ‘handprint’ of products and solutions and develop and deliver ‘blueprints’ for a sustainable planet and society.”

The 2015 Sustainability Report includes Dow’s collective achievements for all the 2015 goals, including highlights aligned to its Breakthroughs for World Challenges goal and improvements to Dow’s operational performance.

Energy:

• BETAMATE™ Structural Adhesives are an enabling technology for dissimilar material assembly, which enables improved vehicle safety and durability while optimizing weight reduction. As a result, 23 million tons of CO2 emissions and 10 billion liters of gasoline have been saved since 1999.

Food:

• Since 2005, Dow’s Omega-9 oils eliminated more than 1.5 million pounds of trans and saturated fat from the North American diet. Omega-9 oils address an important societal need to improve the fat profile of popular foods and decrease the instances of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular and coronary disease.

Water:

• Dow’s FILMTEC™ ECO Reverse Osmosis Elements deliver 40 percent better purification with 30 percent less energy than industry standard reverse osmosis, resulting in an ecologic and economic win.
• LIFEBUOY™ Soap featuring POLYOX™ water-soluble polymers from Dow delivers a positive impact on health and hygiene and most importantly, helps save lives around the world. Created in partnership with Unilever, Dow’s technologies enable LIFEBUOY™ Soap to be longer lasting, more affordable, and easier to lather.

Operational Excellence:

Since 2005, Dow achieved on average a 75 percent improvement in key indicators for Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) and operational excellence, including:

• 1,500 fewer injuries and illnesses;
• 400 fewer process safety incidents; and
• Added 545MW of clean power capacity.

The full 2015 Sustainability Report is available on Dow’s website.