World-Leading Operations Performance

Dow maintains world-leading operations performance in natural resource efficiency, environment, health and safety.

Measuring our progress

Dow’s commitment to safety and world-leading operations performance is key to our company’s success, our history and our “license to operate” in communities around the world. We measure our annual progress through four indices: Unplanned Events, Environmental Stewardship, Total Worker Health and Transportation Stewardship.

Our metrics

  • Dow will strive to eliminate fatalities, significantly reduce severe injury and illness incidents and maintain the total recordable injury and illness rate at industry-leading levels.
  • Dow will strive to eliminate all process safety events that impact our people, our communities and the environment.
  • Dow will strive to eliminate all preventable Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) fatalities.
  • Dow will have a Total Worker Health® implementation that comprehensively controls workplace health risks, protects workers and improves the health of Dow people (Healthy Culture, Healthy Workplace, Healthy People).
  • Dow will demonstrate a 50% improvement in a Transportation Stewardship Index through progress in incident-free performance, leading-edge programs to influence logistics and raw material suppliers and risk reduction across the value chain.
  • Dow will strive to eliminate severe transportation incidents that impact people, property and the environment in the communities through which our products, raw materials and intermediates flow.
  • Dow will improve raw material efficiency utilization index by 10 percent relative to the 2015 baseline.
  • Dow is committed to efficient operations that drive environmental benefits for our communities and the world.
    • Dow will reduce the freshwater intake intensity at key water-stressed sites by 20 percent.
    • Dow will reduce its waste intensity footprint by 20 percent.
    • Dow will grow, but offset emissions of Priority Compounds, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
  • Though we will grow globally over the next 10 years, Dow’s absolute greenhouse gas emissions will not exceed our 2006 baseline.
  • Dow will obtain 750 MW of its power demand from renewable sources by 2025.

Recent highlights

  • Dow has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent since 2006.
  • As of 2019, contracts for 539 MW of renewable power and 244 MW of renewable steam were in place.
  • Improved performance by 30 percent in 2019 vs. 2018 for significant process safety containment events.