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Linda Fisher
Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer |
Our commitment to sustainability can be traced back to decisions and commitments we made when DuPont was founded in 1802. Back then our main product was gunpowder, and from the very beginning, the safety of our employees and neighbors was paramount. Safety became a lasting DuPont core value.
During the 20th century we diversified into many other businesses, and brought to consumers many of essential materials of modern life. In the 21st century, DuPont is a science company generating new products every year from our world class market-driven research and development. With each transformation of our company, we became even more focused on sustainability issues. When environmental and safety laws and regulations were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s, our commitment grew to include meeting those new requirements. In the late 1980s and 1990s, we realized that mere compliance was not sufficient, and that our stakeholders expected more from us. So we went beyond regulatory requirements made voluntary commitments to reduce the environmental footprint of our facilities.
Today, a holistic approach to sustainability is fully integrated into our business models. We work to increase shareholder value while striving for a goal of zero safety and environmental incidents. Simultaneously, we are decreasing raw material and energy inputs into our products and reducing emissions at our manufacturing sites. In 2006, we announced a new set of sustainability goals. With a target date of 2015, these include additional voluntary "footprint reduction goals," as well as - for the first time - "market-facing goals ." Our market-facing goals identify opportunities where we will put our research and development dollars to work to develop new products and offerings that will help meet our customers' needs and expectations for more sustainable products.
While we have made tremendous progress, we recognize that more remains to be done. As a 205-year old company, we acknowledge our legacy issues. The public expects us to deal with them forthrightly, and we are. Because of these issues, some members of the public may question the validity of our accomplishments and our progress against our goals. We expect outside groups to continuously examine our actions to ensure we are "walking the talk." We welcome their interest in our programs, and we are always prepared to show how we measure what we communicate.
This website is part of our effort to be transparent in providing information to the public concerning our accomplishments, noting our progress and plans for further action. We will also use this site to share our positions on the issues that are most often questioned by third parties. We invite you to take a look and let us know what you think.
Thank you for your interest in DuPont!
Linda Fisher
Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer
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