Responsible Care^® Global Charter: A Commitment

The Responsible Care Global Charter is a commitment to improve environmental, health and safety performance, and is to be signed by Chief Executive Officers of chemical companies that are members of industry associations.

Developed by ICCA in 2004-05 for launch in early 2006, the Charter extends and builds upon the original elements of Responsible Care. It focuses on new and important challenges facing the chemical industry and society including sustainable development, effective management of chemicals along the value chain, greater industry transparency, and greater global harmonization and consistency among the national Responsible Care^® programmes. The Charter further expands the global chemical industry’s actions to implement the environmental principles of the United Nations Global Compact.

Pursuing the ethic, principles, and actions of Responsible Care has led the chemical industry to develop several related initiatives, each of which is part of the industry’s effort to live up to the public’s, and its own, expectations.

>>> Responsible Care
>>> High Production Volume (HPV) Chemicals Program
>>> The Long-range Research Initiative (LRI)

The Global Product Strategy

ICCA has developed a Global Product Strategy to improve product stewardship within the chemical industry and with customers throughout the chain of commerce.

Key components of this program to improve product stewardship include:

- guidelines for product stewardship, to share best practices within the chemical industry and with customer industries;

- a tiered process for completing risk characterization and risk management actions for chemicals in commerce;

- product stewardship performance with a special focus on working directly with downstream customers of the chemical industry (the “value chain”);

- exploration of a potential partnership with an intergovernmental organization to enhance global product stewardship, and,

- greater transparency, including ways to make relevant product stewardship information available to the public.

ICCA will be working with its member associations and their member companies to advance this program in the years ahead.

Learn more about the GPS at ICCA’s Side Event in Dubai.