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Sustainability at DuPont

Madeline Ravich | Monday 25th January 2010

A few days ago, I posted a brief history of sustainability at DuPont. I want to thank Lori Captain and Dawn Rittenhouse, both of whom were wonderful to take the time to walk me through their company's environmental history.

Today I'd like to build upon my last Good Company post by focusing on DuPont's stated corporate social responsibility goals. Although the company continues to grapple with some serious challenges, it has come a long way and sets some of the most aggressive market-facing goals I've seen. Yet somehow it doesn't make it onto any of the three CSR rankings I mentioned in my introduction to this series. We will come back to that point later.

But in the meantime, let's focus on the very bold goals that the company has set for itself for 2015. On the environmental footprint side, the company has promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, fleet energy consumption, and emissions of air carcinogens by quantifiable amounts. These types of footprint goals have clear and direct benefits for the companies that set them. Minimized energy usage has the dual effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while saving companies money, water use reductions protect companies from losing public support for operations in parts of the world where clean water is a scarce resource, and you can probably guess why reducing air carcinogens is a priority for a company with DuPont's history.

More interesting to me, however, was DuPont's aggressive suite of market-facing goals, which included doubling its investment in environmentally-beneficial research and development (R&D) programs, growing its annual revenues from at least $2 billion from products that create energy efficiency or greenhouse gas reductions for customers , and doubling its revenues from non-depletable resources to at least $8 billion. The company also set a goal of "making people safer by introducing at least 1,000 new products or services that help make people safer globally" (this refers specifically to materials like Kevlar, which enhance the consumer's physical environment).

To understand the logic behind these goals, I spoke with Noran Eid, an industrials analyst at RiskMetrics Group Sustainability Solutions. Ms. Eid sees the company's 2004 divestment in its fibers business as a move to reduce the company's dependency on petrochemicals (refined oil). Put another way, as oil prices began to spike, the company recognized the prudence of getting out of business lines that depend on oil as an ingredient (fibers qualify). In short, DuPont's leadership perceived that consumers would increasingly be seeking alternatives to products and materials traditionally made with oil. Investing in the development of greener products would pay for itself over time (and then some).

Coming back to the question about the rankings, I asked Ms. Eid why she thought a company doing such significant work on the environmental front is still shut out of the three CSR rankings I shared in a previous post. She cites the company's ongoing issues with labor unions over its use of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, which is the chemical used by companies in the manufacturing of Teflon and all-weather clothing) as its Achilles Heel with respect to the rankings.

So where does the company go from here? Ms. Rittenhouse, Ms. Captain, and Ms. Eid agree that the company's market-facing goals will become increasingly refined over time. But we will have to wait until 2015 to learn of DuPont's next round of sustainability priorities.

Disclosure: The author of this post is a contractor with RiskMetrics Group.

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