SPC Member Spotlight: The Dow Chemical Company

“Member Spotlight” is the newest addition to our GreenBlue blog where we will regularly highlight the sustainability achievements and initiatives of a Sustainable Packaging Coalition member company. For our inaugural Member Spotlight, we would like to bring attention to the Dow Chemical Company and their current collaboration with The Nature Conservancy.

In 2011, Dow Chemical Company and The Nature Conservancy announced their plans for a powerful collaboration to help the business community recognize and value nature in global business strategies. The aim of this collaboration is to protect earth’s natural systems by quantifying nature’s services and incorporating this value into business decision making.
Since the 2011 launch, The Nature Conservancy and Dow have identified crucial ecosystem services that Dow relies upon and have set up pilot sites to analyze these relationships. While one site location is still being determined, the other two are located in Freeport, Texas and Santa Vitoria, Brazil. These locations serve as “living laboratories” where the two collaborators are experimenting with methods of ecosystem valuation. Biodiversity topics being studied include natural hazard mitigation, freshwater limitations, air and water quality, and soil retention.
The Freeport location is the first completed pilot site with experimentation results currently under review for expected release in early 2014. From the start of their collaboration, Dow and The Nature Conservancy have been clear about their intent to publicly share the critical lessons learned to help anyone interested in applying similar tools.
“I truly believe that through science and collaboration, sustainability can be achieved,” said Erica Ocampo, Sustainability Manager at Dow. “Our collaboration with The Nature Conservancy is proving that and it is something we are very proud of.”
To hear more specifics about the experiments and subsequent findings of the Freeport and Santa Vitoria pilot sites, check out a recent webinar – The Economics of Ecosystems: The Nature Conservancy Dow Collaboration.