This year is a great time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Responsible Care. We can feel pride about this accomplishment. And then, let's start looking to the future. When it comes to keeping people safe, we can never be satisfied.
Originally published on LinkedIn on February 6, 2025.
Our industry celebrates the 40th anniversary of Responsible Care® this year. It is a great opportunity to stop and reflect for a moment on the progress we have made in safety and environmental protection. We can feel pride about this accomplishment and then let’s start looking to the future.
Responsible Care (RC) was founded in Canada in 1985 by the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) and has grown into a U.N. recognized initiative practiced in 73 countries by 96 of the largest 100 chemical producers. RC has led the chemical industry’s progress in safety and sustainability by offering codes and principles, ensuring that products do not present unacceptable risks to employees, customers, communities, or the environment.
NOVA Chemicals is proud to be a founding member. RC is the foundation of how we build our safety culture and has certainly come a long way in 40 years.
But when it comes to keeping people safe, we can never be satisfied. We must continually improve as we strive for RC excellence.
When I think about the future, we need to lean in on Human and Organizational Performance (HOP).
HOP is part of an updated approach to manufacturing safely and reliably, a philosophy focused on delivering operational excellence by working with people. It’s the way people, processes, equipment, work systems, and culture interact as a system. When we think about the interaction of people with the work environment, we can make it easier to get things right, and harder to get things wrong.
Rather than focusing solely on managing and controls, doing safety with people is about collaboration, engagement, and empowerment. It recognizes that our people are problem-solvers, and they drive our work as well as our safety culture. Safety success is a collective effort, and a proactive mindset focused on learning with people at the core.
By leveraging HOP, we can transform into a learning organization that continuously improves by actively learning from people and events and applying those learnings in an effective way.
Congrats to our industry and the CIAC on the 40th anniversary of RC. I look forward to the next 40 years of improving our industry’s safety performance.
See the full LinkedIn article here.
Victor Alvarado is the Senior Vice President of Operations, Engineering, and Capital Projects and provides leadership and direction for NOVA Chemicals’ world-class manufacturing assets in the U.S. and Canada.