Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)

ICI and its communities
ICI’s Responsible Care Management System standards require each site to engage with its local community. At a minimum, this involves regular communication with community leaders to ensure that any concerns about sites’ impact on their neighbourhoods are addressed. Employees at many sites also volunteer time and funds, and sites provide facilities and funds, for community initiatives. Since 2003, ICI has quantified the extent of the Group’s community involvement each year. Cash donations to community/humanitarian causes, both local and international, totalled £2.01m (2005 £3.07m) of which £1.71m (2005 £2.44m) was from the Company and the balance from employees’ fundraising activities. Donations in kind, mainly product, totalled £0.26m (2005 £0.14m) . Employee volunteer time on Company-supported projects totalled about 17,300 hours (2005 25,100 hours) of which more than 10,700 were on Company time. The total equivalent value of donations and time was £2.53m (2005 £3.52m), more than 172,500 equivalent hours – or about 0.8 working days per employee.

Examples of activity and recognition include:

ICI and the environment
ICI continues to set improvement objectives and report against a range of environmental parameters. Sustainability Challenge 2010 includes objectives to reduce the impact of our operations on land, air and water. Changes are measured from the new baseline year 2005 and both baseline levels and results are adjusted for portfolio changes. In 2006 we achieved: 3% energy reduction per tonne of production (2010 target 5% reduction from 2005), 2% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per tonne (2010 target 5%) but a 1% increase in water use per tonne (2010 target 10%). We have also reduced air emissions of hazardous substances (by 27%) and acid gases (by 8%) per tonne of production.

Since 1990 ICI has reported reductions in energy use per tonne of production in excess of 43%, and again in 2007 there is a specific focus to improve the overall energy efficiency of our operations, with cross business activity to achieve improvements. The latest have been achieved through efficiency improvements, asset rationalisation and redesigned production processes. Many of these indicators remain important not only for environmental performance but also for business sustainability as energy price rises, global warming issues and regional water scarcity become more prevalent.

ICI’s supply chain
Product stewardship and supply chain improvements are an integral part of Sustainability Challenge 2010. In 2006 a revised annual product stewardship assessment was carried out by all business units, in order to monitor progress and target areas for further improvements. Quest made good progress in piloting a supplier assessment process which includes social and labour practices issues as well as product stewardship and health, safety and environmental issues. During the year, it came to light that one of our small volume suppliers in Brazil was employing child labour, although they denied this. Following investigation we ceased trading with them and have worked with local NGOs to strengthen our assessment and engagement processes.

ICI’s corporate governance
Good corporate governance is integral to sustainable practice, and ICI’s corporate governance practices are reported on pages 38 to 43. ICI’s Code of Conduct was updated in 2006. In addition, an updated Group Antitrust Compliance Policy was adopted in 2006 and existing antitrust training programmes have been strengthened to support the objectives of this Policy. ICI’s whistleblowing system, “Speak Up”, continues to operate worldwide. The system encourages open reporting and ensures anonymity for callers should they so wish. ICI investigates the issue reported in each call (96 in 2006) and monitors the call rate in each business and region to identify trends.