Responsible Care® is a voluntary
initiative of the worldwide chemical industry that promotes continuous
improvement in safety and the protection of health and the environment,
applicable not only to the organization but also the entire supply chain.
The program, first introduced in 1988 by the American Chemistry Council
(ACC) to address public concerns about the manufacture and use of chemicals,
has now been adopted in over 45 countries.
Organizations adopting Responsible Care® have acknowledged that the
program has made a genuine impact to the way they do business. However,
owing to the voluntary nature, the program has had its share of criticism.
Rather than abandoning the program because of the criticism, ACC choose
to strengthen the program by integrating the Responsible Care® requirements
into the globally accepted Environmental Management Standard, ISO 14001,
and at the same time putting in place a mandatory Third Party Certification
program.
This article attempts to trace the history of the Responsible Care Program
and its transition to a certifiable technical specification: RC 14001.
Responsible Care® principles in some form or other have been long
adopted by leading organizations in the chemical industry. The trigger
point for the formal adoption of the Responsible Care® principles
(see Table 1), however, was after the Bhopal Gas tragedy. Responsible
Care® was originally started off to address health, safety and environment
and gradually expanded to include performance metrics reporting and a
Management System Verification (MSV) protocol as a form of evaluation.
Table 1
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