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Approach: Identifying Issues Early and Minimizing Risk
Future Goals: Implementing Processes Globally
Approach: Identifying Issues Early and Minimizing Risk
ChevronTexaco seeks to manage the environmental, health and safety impacts of its products throughout their entire life cycle. This concept is known as "product stewardship."
Product stewardship is an integral part of ChevronTexaco's health, environment and safety policy and approach. We require our businesses to:
- Identify potential health, environment and safety impacts early in the development of new or improved products, and minimize risks to people and the environment throughout each product's life cycle.
- Communicate information on potential hazards to people who use our products or who might be affected by them, including workers, customers, third parties and distributors.
ChevronTexaco has a variety of processes and programs in place that help it meet these commitments. For example, several of our downstream operating companies have established formal risk management processes in which they conduct routine product stewardship reviews on all product lines on a three- to five-year cycle. They also conduct product stewardship reviews for major changes and projects that have potentially significant environmental, health and safety impacts. To oversee those efforts, several businesses employ staffs devoted exclusively to product stewardship.
Product stewardship reviews sometimes result in significant changes. For example, a review of the 2003 introduction of ethanol into gasoline marketed in California resulted in the development of an internal ethanol storage and handling standard that we believe is among the most comprehensive in the industry.
We also work to educate customers and the public on safe and responsible handling of our products. We are implementing a new, Web-based global system for managing material safety data sheets (MSDSs) and other health, environment and safety information. These documents provide information on safe handling procedures for each of ChevronTexaco's products. Many countries require that this information be made available, and ChevronTexaco is working to provide MSDSs worldwide. The Web-based system currently stores more than 50,000 MSDSs, and we plan to complete implementation of the worldwide MSDS system in 2004. We also have a 24-hour-a-day global hotline that provides public access to on-call technical specialists who can answer questions about our products.
Future Goals: Implementing Processes Globally
Although product stewardship processes are well developed in several operating companies, particularly in North America, ChevronTexaco faces a challenge in implementing equivalent systems across all its operations. Toward that goal, in 2003 we created a central technology group responsible for coordinating product stewardship issues for our global nonfuels businesses, including lubricants, chemical additives, and marine fuels and lubricants.
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