Thinking about More Sustainable Products: Using an Efficient Tool for Sustainability Education, Innovation, and Project Management To Encourage Sustainability Thinking in a Multinational Corporation

Embedding the concept of sustainability into a company’s culture is immensely challenging but is likely to be critical to the long-term viability of science and technology companies that rely on successful innovation to remain competitive. Moving to a more sustainable society can be expected to provide plenty of commercially attractive business opportunities for forward thinking organizations. The combination of life cycle thinking with the enabling science of chemistry will be essential to successfully address world challenges such as the strain on resources caused by population growth and changing demographics. The Dow Chemical Company has been developing strategies and tools around holistic thinking for more than 20 years and has recently introduced a methodology to broaden sustainability knowledge and encourage life cycle thinking among innovators new to this topic while providing insight into the sustainability of new product development. A tool, the Dow Chemical Sustainability Footprint Tool, is described, using examples to illustrate the insights gained by project teams and business management. With more than 250 project assessments carried out so far, it is fair to say that sustainability knowledge among innovators is increasing, that the tool has met its design criteria such as being self-explanatory and easy and quick to use, and that it is providing business management with sustainability overviews of their project portfolios.