The DIC Group's Sustainability Program
Amid rising environmental concerns, including climate change, and increasingly urgent social imperatives, companies today face an evermore diverse array of challenges, including rising awareness of the need to achieve sustainability in a manner that takes into account the environment, ecosystems and socioeconomic issues. In fiscal year 2018, DIC established the ESG Unit, a specialized department to further expand Group ESG initiatives worldwide.
The framework for sustainability-related disclosure in Japan is evolving. Effective from 2023, publicly listed companies must disclose nonfinancial as well as financial information in the annual securities report that they are legally required to file with the Japanese government. This is prompting significant related changes, including to pertinent laws and regulations, as well as to business practices. In line with its basic sustainability policy, the DIC Group continues to promote a variety of sustainability initiatives worldwide and works to maintain an accurate grasp of social imperatives pertaining to ESG-related issues.
Basic Sustainability Policy (Partially revised in March 2019)
The DIC Group is dedicated to conducting its business while retaining a strong commitment to five key concepts: preserving safety and health, managing risks, ensuring fair business practices and respect for diversity and human rights, maintaining harmony with the environment and advancing its protection, and creating value for society through innovation and contributing to ongoing economic growth. DIC Group employees will continue working to deliver the value that its stakeholders—including its customers, suppliers, local communities, shareholders and investors, and employees—expect, showing ingenuity and a sense of responsibility. The Group itself will strive to remain an organization that contributes to sustainability for society, as well as to the conservation and improvement of the global environment, by capitalizing on its businesses to achieve unfaltering growth, thereby enhancing its own sustainability.
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Notes:
- With the aim of ensuring that it remains a globally trusted corporate citizen with a proud reputation, in December 2010 the DIC Group became a signatory to the UNGC. The Group also takes the guidelines provided by ISO 26000, the International Organization for Standardization’s standard for social responsibility, into account in conducting its operations.
- The global community today recognizes the promotion of ESG management, which seeks to balance sustainable economic growth and the resolution of social imperatives, as c ritical. This is evidenced by the fact that c ountries worldwide have ratified the Paris Agreement and the S DGs, both of which were adopted in 2015.
Sustainability Framework and Themes
Themes
The DIC Group’s sustainability framework comprises 13 key themes, which are categorized as basic themes, themes that demonstrate unique capabilities and themes that combine elements of the previous two classifications. The Group implements a broad range of global initiatives that take into account its responsibility to ensure proper product stewardship, as well as its position as a leading manufacturer of fine chemicals.
Deployment
In line with its basic sustainability policy, the DIC Group has formulated a medium-term (fiscal years 2022–2025) policy and creates an annual activity plan for each of its key sustainability themes. The Group makes use of the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle in promoting initiatives and reports on its achievements annually in the DIC Report. Individual business groups, product divisions, sites, and DIC Group companies in Japan and in other countries and territories are charged with pursuing effective sustainability programs by formulating their own activity plans, based on the Group’s plan, as well as with ensuring that the Group’s policies permeate their organizations and labor forces, and promoting sustainability initiatives that align with business targets.
System for Promoting Sustainability Initiatives
The DIC Group’s system for promoting sustainability issues centers on the Sustainability Committee, which answers directly to the president and CEO and which met four times in fiscal year 2022. The committee functions as an advisory body, and is responsible for formulating responses to key social imperatives. The Sustainability Committee is also tasked with reinforcing sustainability initiatives and deliberating on critical related matters. Since January 2020, the committee has been chaired by the president. In fiscal year 2022, DIC began promoting initiatives in line with the sustainability strategies of DIC Vision 2030, which are to expand sustainable products, reduce CO₂ emissions and respond to a circular economy.
Ensuring DIC Remains a Globally Trusted Corporate Citizen with a Proud Reputation
Leveraging its Position as a Global Manufacturer of Fine Chemicals to Support the UNGC
Seeking to fulfill its responsibilities as a member of the international community in a more proactive manner, in December 2010 the DIC Group became a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and pledged its support for the Ten Principles of the UNGC.
Inaugurated in 2000, the UNGC is a voluntary initiative for companies that seek to achieve sustainable development. Companies and organizations worldwide have pledged their support for the UNGC in the belief that global sustainable development is possible if companies align their business practices with, and fulfill their social responsibilities in, 10 globally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and the prevention of corruption.
Applying the Ten Principles of the UNGC
The DIC Group Code of Business Conduct conforms with the Ten Principles of the UNGC. The Group is capitalizing on its participation in this program to advance its operations around the world, while at the same time giving ever-greater consideration to the environment and human rights, with the aim of ensuring sustainability for global society.
Complying with ISO 26000
The DIC Group operates in a manner that is consistent with ISO 26000, released in November 2010, which provides businesses and organizations guidelines for operating in a socially responsible manner.
DIC Sustainability Themes
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
At the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, a proposal titled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” later summarized as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was adopted with the participation of more than 150 UN member states. The agenda, which succeeded the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), encompasses 17 goals and 169 targets. All UN member states are expected to mobilize efforts to attain the 17 goals, essential to sustainable development for the planet, by 2030. The DIC Group pledges to contribute through its business activities to the success of the SDGs.
