Unit 6b Environmental report

Good morning. Today we’re going to look at ICI’s environmental programmes and environmental performance since 1990. I’d like to begin with some background to ICI’s environmental projects.

Then we’ll go on to look at our Challenge 2000 project. And finally, we’ll turn to the results of these programs.

Now the story really began in the 1980s when people started becoming more concerned about environment issues. The first ICI environmental project was a result of the realization that, as a major player in the chemicals industry. ICI would had to address these growing public concerns. So, in 1900 we presented our shareholders with a program to reduce the environmental impact of our worldwide activities. Many of the steps we took back then have since become government legislation. The project included some very ambitious targets for improving the company’s environmental performance. We realised that these goals demanded significant investment, so we committed the largest share of our annual £500 million Safety, Health and Environment budget to the project. Since 1990 we’ve spent about 200 million each year on environmental improvements. As things developed, we soon realised that there were no cheap options or quick fixes. Therefore, we began directing this biggest improvements. And then, in 1995, we assessed our performance and set ourselves equally demanding objectives for the next five years. These formed the basis of our Challenge 2000 project.

If you’d like to look at the screen, you’ll see the four main objectives of Chanllenge 2000. As you can see, our first objective is to ensure that by the year 2000 all our business comply with the relevant environmental regulations in each of the countries in which their products are sold. This applies to all our new and existing plants throughout the world. Our second objective is to improve energy efficiency. Now, here, we decided that by the year 2000 we would reduce our energy consumption by 10%. The starting point for this reduction would be the 1995 level. Moving on to the next objective, ICI intends to have the environmental impact of its business by the year 2000. I’m sure you’ll understand exactly how ambitious this is, but we feel it demonstrates the importance of the issue. To achieve this target, we decided to concentrate on those wastes which pose the greatest threat to the environment and give their reduction the higheat priority. And finally, our last objective is to ensure that all our business have what we call Product Stewardship Programmes. These programmes are a tool for managing all our chemicals throughout their complete product life cycle. They’ll provide up-to-date records of all the chemicals that we use and handle. And what’s more, they’ll ensure that all labels and public information are printed in the languages of our customers. The results of these programmes will be published each year in a special report.

Now, it’s clear that growing public concern about the future of the environment will affect government thinking--- and no-one in the industry doubs that tougher legislation is to come. That’s why Challenge 2000 is such an essential part of ICI’s strategic development. With the improvements we’re making today, we can feel confident about fulfilling the legal obligations of tomorrow. At ICI we realise that we have a commitment not only to our customers, employees and shareholders, but also to the communities in which we work and produce our goods.

So now, I’d like to turn to the results of the …