Remarks by ELI Board Member Linda Fisher

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Well, now they do. The NGOs understand the market place and they understand competition and they know how to use both as effective ways to drive environmental progress. The focus on market forces can take several forms. It might be a marketplace campaigns attacking a product or industry, or it might be working in partnership to create incentives for more sustainable products and practices. It might be local, or it may play out globally. The end result is change. Because when consumers, influenced by government, or by NGOS, or based on their own information, however imperfect, make their preferences clear, companies change and when companies change, whole industries can change… and they can change globally.

At DuPont, we are seeing this change. We tend to sell more business to business, to the automobile industry, the construction industry, the agricultural industry and food industry, the electronics industry. Our customers, largely other businesses, are beginning to demand a different kind of product.

They want materials that make their products more sustainable. They want materials made from renewable resources rather than petroleum, materials that improve the efficiency of the appliances sell, the automobiles they produce, the buildings they construct or they want to be able to produce more efficient solar panels and fuel cells. To do that, they need the DuPonts of the world to create the materials to make their products more sustainable.

Companies like DuPont can reduce their own risk by reducing their environmental impact, but we cannot grow our business that way. We will only grow our business in the new, more environmentally conscience marketplace, by changing the kinds of products and offerings we bring to the market.

GE recognized this when they announced their Ecoimagination strategy. Wal-Mart and Home Depot when they announced their commitment to change the kinds of products they will put on their shelves. At DuPont, just over a year ago, we announced our 2015 Sustainability goals, which for the first time set market facing goals and committed the company to investing R&D dollars to bring more sustainable products to the market. And goals to grow revenues by selling products that improve energy efficiency and reduce green house gases of our customers and their customers. These commitments are not green wash, they are our growth strategy.

We also will only grow our business if we recognize the growing role of NGOs in shaping those markets, and give them a louder voice, a seat at the table, so to speak, to help us identify the market needs and opportunities and avoid the pitfalls.

Successful companies have always been those who know where their customers are going before their customers do. They are ahead because they anticipate what the market will demand and put the research and design dollars on those bets. It is the success of that timing that defines the winners and losers in the marketplace.

If you look at trends around energy… supply and price, trends around water use, supply and quality, trends around food, and food production, you couple that with a more aware consumer, sprinkle in a global political agenda on which the environment is a bigger issue than it has been at anytime in the past, and the growing importance of uncommon partnerships between business and NGOs, partnerships that two decades ago, would have been unthinkable, then you can see that economic success will come first to those companies that integrate sustainable growth to their business strategies.

When customers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Toyota ask companies like DuPont to produce a different kind of product, to be able to understand and verify the content of the materials we sell to them or request only “renewably sourced” materials, when those requests come from the marketplace, and are driven by more than government regulations, something transformative is happening. When Morgan Stanley or Citibank partner with Environmental Defense to guide investment decisions, than something fundamental is beginning to change, something that is good for the environment and good for the economy.

But, my friends at EPA should not feel totally left behind. This new dynamic in industry and these partnerships with NGOs can only be enhanced by thoughtful, measured government regulation. Regulations that can guide the marketplace, set the terms and the limits, sanction the methods and measurements that level the playing field and provide industry the incentives and roadmap for bringing solutions to the marketplace.

And that is why so many companies joined together with environmental groups to call for climate legislation. But the government needs to think differently, in some ways, more broadly, more creatively about how to use regulatory authority. It is a global market place, it is a global regulatory environment. Information moves instantly, markets react almost as fast. So government must be able to act with more information, and much faster than before, and regulators must have the ability to think about the global marketplace dynamics in a way that they haven’t before and use it to good advantage.

If those companies that have embarked on the journey to develop more sustainable business strategies succeed, and I believe they will, it won’t be greenwash, and it will have remarkable benefits for society and for the planet. It is the invention and innovation from industry, guided by sound government action and with strong partnerships with the NGOs, that is necessary if we are to combat the planet’s largest challenges.

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work this area that I care deeply about, both during my years at EPA and my years in the private sector, and to have worked along side so many of you here tonight. I want to thank all of you, and I want to again thank WCEE for this recognition tonight.

Linda J. Fisher
Vice President, SHE & Chief Sustainability officer
DuPont Company

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