Creating Shareholder and Societal Value ... While Reducing Our Footprint Throughout the Value Chain

From DuPont Chief Executive Officer Charles O. Holliday, Jr.:

As a society, and particularly for business, the closing decades of the 20th century were marked by significant environmental progress. We responded constructively to the environmental crises of the 1970s and 1980s, and in the 1990s we turned our attention to the ultimate challenge — sustainable growth. At DuPont we are proud of a decade of reducing our environmental footprint. We have come a long way, certainly in reductions of waste and emissions, but also in recognizing the impact of our operations on global issues such as climate change.

However, there are still enormous challenges. Extrapolation of current trends paints a picture of an unsustainable world: an increasing gap between the rich and the poor; billions of people who do not have access to clean water, proper sanitation, adequate food, shelter and health care; and the steady decline in key global ecosystems.

As a company that is owned by thousands of investors, our challenge is to address these issues in a way that makes business sense. We define this direction as sustainable growth - the creation of shareholder and societal value while decreasing our environmental footprint along the value chains in which we operate.