Pierre Brondeau
President and CEO
FMC Corporation

FMC Corporation, a chemical company with a 126-year history of innovation, believes our future depends on operating sustainable businesses that contribute to our global environmental quality. To us, this means developing market-driven products and technologies that protect our planet’s environment and reduce energy consumption while improving our own manufacturing operations to protect our employees and the local communities in which we operate.

We have reduced industrial wastes by 50 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent, and accident rates by 73 percent from our manufacturing sites worldwide since 2000.  In the United States, we have reduced EPA-designated priority chemicals in releases and wastes by 65 percent and 93 percent respectively since 2000.  Working with local communities and government agencies, FMC has returned non-productive brownfield sites back to active uses creating thousands of new jobs and alleviating environmental hazards.  

In developing countries FMC is a source of both income and jobs by helping establish environmentally sustainable seaweed farms that supply our business.  We have contributed to the world’s food supply by creating products that actually reduce chemical inputs while increasing crop yields.  We are also reducing incidents of food-borne illness through our line of halogen-free disinfectants and sanitizers used to safeguard food products, packaging and food processing facilities.

In addition to waste reduction, sustainable farming and increased food safety measures, our range of new green chemistries includes lithium used to power hybrid and electric cars, and soda ash used in the production of solar panel glass.  We have commercialized new in situ remediation chemistry to quickly bring sites with contaminated soil back to sustainable use and reduce landfill burdens.  We are developing products and technologies that cost-effectively remove critical air emissions such as nitrogen and sulfur oxides, and mercury from fossil fuel sources as well as safer and more environmentally friendly chemistries to improve wastewater disinfection and oil and gas production.  Our natural, sustainable biopolymers are replacements for petroleum derivatives across a wide range of consumer packaged goods.  And, new applications of our specialty chemistries have promise for reducing energy consumption by extending the life of roads, runways, dams and bridges. 

FMC is committed to technological innovation that reinvents the way we produce our traditional chemistries.  Three of every four dollars we spend on research is for new sustainable applications, such as the next generation of lithium power, or making our operations greener, such as converting waste methane to energy use. We believe it is incumbent upon us to continually look for ways that we can sustainably manage our future, safely steward our products and contribute to a greener globe.