A voluntary programme operating in 52 countries, Responsible Care is an international environment, health and safety initiative of the chemical industry. A total of 107 Finnish companies with a workforce of over 20,000 employees are committed to the programme, representing over 80 % of the production of Finland’s chemical industry. Through Responsible Care, the chemical industry has been monitoring development of its environment, health and safety performance for almost 20 years. The aim of the companies committed to the programme is to improve their performance on an on-going basis. This means continuing investment in matters relating to environment, health and safety. The results for 2010 are based on data collected from participating companies.

Emission cuts, which are the most significant achievement of the work carried out so far, were largely realised during the first few years of the initiative. Since then, positive development has continued, as reflected in key water discharge and air emission indices. Similar development can be seen also from greenhouse gas, energy efficiency and material efficiency indices.

More than 90 % of Responsible Care companies nowadays run a management system. Training courses focusing on environment, health and safety are organised annually, addressing the entire personnel of participating companies. Substantial funds are being invested in environmental, health and safety work. Over 70 % of the companies committed to Responsible Care have introduced a national occupational safety card. The number of lost time injuries (LTI3) was 10.8 in 2010. During the 19 years of the programme, the number of accidents has declined by over 70 %. The goal is clear: zero accidents. No fatalitalities to own personnel, but three fatalities to contractors occurred in the companies committed to the Responsible Care programme during 2010.

Neighbourhood residents and other stakeholders are widely interested in chemical companies. In 2010, numerous chemical industry companies organised Open Door Days and other stakeholder events, attracting as many as 5,400 visitors. In addition, more than half of the participating companies have established other forms of community cooperation. The environmental reports and the social reports of Finnish chemical industry companies often get top marks in domestic reviews. More than 30 companies committed to Responsible Care publish a separate annual report on progress in environmental and social responsibility.

Chemical Industry Federation of Finland (CIFF) has implemented practices consistent with the ICCA product stewardship guidelines as part of national Responsible Care program. The companies commited to program take these guidelines into account their own product stewardship work from company's own premiss.

One of the key elements of Product Stewardship work is to share product-related environment. health ans safery information between supply chain partners.  To ensure that, companies commited to Responsible Care program actively cooperate with supply chain partners and down-stream users (DSU) to falilitate better environment, health and safety performance of supply chain. CIFF also takes care of it´s part when actively cooperating with different stakeholders like authorites in issues related on environment, health and safety.