Responsible Care

Responsible Care is the U.S. chemical industry’s award-winning performance initiative that has resulted in reduced emissions of 70 percent and an employee safety record that is four times better than the average of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Responsible Care helps America’s leading chemical companies to go above and beyond government requirements and openly communicate their results to the public.

Responsible Care companies improve their performance by implementing world-class management practices; working with independent auditors; tracking performance through environmental, health, safety and security measures; and extending these best practices to business partners throughout the industry.

Responsible Care and Albemarle

Albemarle is a member of American Chemistry Council (ACC) and is committed to the principles of Responsible Care. However, what does it really mean to be a Responsible Care company? Responsible Care goes beyond our legal obligations and includes the following core objectives:

Striving for excellence in safety and environmental performance, which means:

• Doing our job without injury and helping others avoid injury.
• Keeping our awareness levels high with programs like SCAN and Safety from the Heart. Our safety performance is one of the best in our industry and any other industry.
• Conducting our tasks without adverse impact to the environment.
• Continually improving our environmental performance as measured by spills, releases, permit exceedences and neighbor complaints.
• Seeking to minimize the "footprint" from our operations by actively pursuing opportunities to reduce our emissions, water and energy usage and waste created. Our award-winning successes include the Magnolia marshes and the Tyrone wastewater treatment project.

Encouraging our suppliers and contractors to strive for continuous improvement in safety and environmental which includes:

• Auditing these operations and sharing our best practices and incident information. These activities extend from our raw material suppliers, waste disposers, and tollers, to our on-site service providers.

Distributing our products safely and in an environmentally responsible manner which means:

• Providing information, such as MSDS and handling manual, and training to our carriers and distributors to handle our products.
• Auditing our carriers and distributors to ensure they meet the expected level of HSE performance.

Ensuring our products can be and are used in a safe and environmentally sound manner by our customers through:

• Providing information, such as MSDS, product handling, technical bulletins, and training to our customers in the safe use and environmentally sound handling of our products.
• Understanding and communicating the hazards of our products though testing.
• Minimizing exposure of our products through our industrial hygiene program and determining the potential releases to the environment through our product stewardship efforts.

Being responsible and positive contributor to the communities we operate in by:

• Providing information on the HSE aspects of our operation through our community advisory panels
• Being a leader in community support functions like United Way, Habitat for Humanity, Relay for Life, and the numerous educational programs our employees support.

Responsible Care involves not only our own operations but also our dealings with customers, suppliers and our neighbors. Although the HSE group plays an important role in our Responsible Care program, each employee has an important role to play to understand our commitment to Responsible Care and to ensure that these objectives are met.

Product Risk Management

Albemarle has an extensive program to determine, mitigate, and manage the risk associated with our products. An overview of our program can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat using this link.

Responsible Care Management System

Albemarle utilizes a management system approach to overseeing its Responsible Care program. Like other ACC companies, Albemarle has previously used ACC's Management Systems Verification (MSV) program to perform an independent assessment of our management systems.

Albemarle’s Baton Rouge headquarters received its certificate in September 2005. Since 2005, Albemarle has certified the following sites with the RC14001 process: Bayport, TX; Magnolia, AR; Orangeburg, SC; Pasadena, TX; Process Development Center, Baton Rouge, LA; South Haven, MI; Twinsburg, OH and Tyrone, PA.

Responsible Care Questions or Comments