DuPont, as a member of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), is implementing a safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system meeting the ACC's Responsible Care® Management System requirements. 

DuPont has been an ACC member for over two decades. DuPont was a leader in the development of Responsible Care® and was one of the first chemical companies to adopt the ACC’s Responsible Care® Codes of Management Practices, which were initiated in the late 1980’s. DuPont has also led efforts to expand Responsible Care® to encompass advances such as security, public reporting of metrics, and management systems certification. Our company’s commitment to Responsible Care® is reflected in "The DuPont Commitment Safety, Health and the Environment". DuPont plant sites and businesses globally have evaluated performance against the Responsible Care® Codes of Management Practices, and validated full implementation annually. Implementation of these codes is audited as part of our long-standing safety, health, and environmental (SHE) audit program.

In 2000, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) recognized the need to move beyond its traditional core structure of Responsible Care®, since United States laws and regulations cover >75% of the original activities addressed in the Codes of Management Practices. In 2002, the ACC, to help its members achieve better SHE performance and business value, initiated the change to a single Responsible Care Management System (RCMS).

The RCMS "management system" is a plan-do-check-act (PDCA) continuous improvement model. With RCMS, an external third party registrar audits and grants certification if the management system is in compliance with the 30 elements of the ACC RCMS Technical Specification standard. For DuPont, our existing SHE practices make up the vast majority of the RCMS requirements, and we built on these to complete the system. ACC members are required to implement RCMS for headquarters, businesses and sites that are part of the ACC dues base. DuPont headquarters successfully implemented the RCMS and achieved headquarters certification in 2005. Fourteen SBU’s and approximately forty-six US manufacturing sites will implement the RCMS by the end of 2007. The third party registrar will audit eight of these sites and five SBU’s to determine compliance with the ACC requirements.