The heart of sustainability

Along with the ongoing process changes, chemical producers are committing to putting sustainability at the heart of their future business development. During 2005, Dow Chemical announced its 2015 Sustainability Goals, which included commitments to continue R&D efforts in green chemistry and improve resource management.
An implementation of this is Dow's recent move to piping methane, generated as a by-product from its landfill sites, to its latex production facility in Georgia, US.
Dow Chemical's chief sustainability officer David Kepler says that when sustainability practices are put into place, and scaled up, their outcomes can be wide-reaching. "Sustainable chemistry begins by assuring our own footprint is light but it only reaches its full potential when it delivers solutions to the problems faced by society," he says.
Kepler's opinion is endorsed and taken further by the UK's Institute of Chemical Engineers chief executive Dr David Brown. "Sustainable chemistry will play an important role in addressing some of the key social issues we face in terms of the impact of climate change, the availability of fossil fuels, the security of energy supply, safe water, affordable healthcare and more effective material resources," he says.
The incremental changes that continue to be made by businesses in the chemical sector are just the beginning. As industry responds to consumer concern, and with the possibility of falling supplies of traditional base materials such as ethylene, it becomes not just the chemical industry that must be sustainable but the feedstock too.