Fortune Staff

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

Global 500

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legacy

LG Chem

lg chem

CEO Mark E. Newman discusses what it means to be a purpose driven company, impactful leader, and how he is focusing on his companies ESG goals. 

Chemours CEO: “A lot more communication and collaboration are needed in a purpose-driven company”

Leadership

CEO Mark E. Newman insights on leading with purpose

CEO Mark E. Newman shares how to lead with purpose and become an impactful leader. 

CEO Mark E Newman discusses what it means to be a purpose driven company, impactful leader, and how he is focusing on his companies ESG goals. 

Chemours CEO: Good Leaders win the hearts and minds of employees

Is a great company. We were formed in 2015, we have three industry leading businesses were in the pigments business, we're in the refrigerants and we're into advanced material sink floor of polymers, about seven billion in revenue, 6400 employees globally? You know, sustainability is very key to who we are as a company. We started R. E S. G. Journey back in 2018 with the publication of our corporate responsibility commitments or CRC goals. These are really 10 goals that we hope to achieve by 2030 there around, you know, a shared planet around inspired people and an evolved portfolio. So all three pillars of these uh corporate responsibility commitments drive our commitment to E. S. G. The requirements of a purpose driven company. To me start with leadership leaders that engage, inspire and excite about the greater reason for why cameras exists, why we're here and what we're trying to do. So a lot more communication and collaboration uh is needed in a purpose driven company. To be an effective leader. To me requires you to engage and win the hearts and minds of every employee and to really allow each employee to be their true self to begin with and to realize their full potential in the company. And so that to me is the essence of great leadership in a purpose driven company. How do I measure success? It really starts with performance and so clearly all the measures of financial performance, revenue, performance, but it also has to do with our we h achieving our principal purpose. I like to think of it as purpose driven performance. So on the one hand, are we fulfilling the mandate of our vision? And on the other hand, are we exciting others by our performance more broadly as a company? I want to be known for its impact on the world and creating a better world through the power of our chemistry. I want that to be visible in all three of our industry leading businesses, the most sustainable Pigment or T. I. 02 business, advancing climate friendly refrigerants and advancing clean energy and advanced electronics. Be that electric vehicles or hydrogen or the enablement of five G.

Toxic chemicals in beauty products disproportionately impact people of color, leading to health issues such as infertility and cancer. Here’s how activists and companies in the clean beauty industry are trying to change things.

The fight against toxic beauty

Health

Toxic chemicals in beauty products disproportionately impact people of color, leading to health issues such as infertility and cancer.

I think many consumers feel that if something is available on the shelf at the store, then it's safe. And that's not always the case, we know that people of color are disproportionately affected by toxic chemicals and consumer products across the board. The good news is that the more that we're aware of this, and the more that we're pushing for accountability and change along the supply chain, the more we will have a positive impact and this is solvable. The clean beauty segment or the natural beauty segment is growing rapidly. We can make change in this industry and across industry to ensure that we just clean up our act. Unfortunately, products that are marketed to Women of color often contain more toxic chemicals than products marketed to white women. Whether it's chemical hair strainers that are known to have formaldehyde. We can talk about skin lightening creams that have mercury systems of power and oppression such as racism and Classism and sexism may impact our beauty worms, consequent beauty rituals, chemical exposures as well as health outcomes across a life course, Women of color are major consumers of the beauty industry's. They're not only using more products, but there are likely to be using products that have a greater toxic load. Beauty ideals, both in this country as well as across the globe are very much informed by systems of power and oppression such as structural racism, colonialism and essentially Eurocentric beauty norms really are the pervasive ideal that impacts all of us with white femininity really being at the top of this beauty hierarchy, very lovely crystal right beauty cream. The closer you are to the top of our pyramid, white femininity, the more social and economic benefits you'll be afforded. And so that propagates certain types of products that are heavily promoted, heavily marketed. Two women of color to help them attain that. Look, I'm a black woman. I remember I was 12 years old when I got my first hair relaxer for 20 years. Um I was I was doing that with my hair and I didn't realize the potential health risk seeing the disproportionate youth and products that were marketed to people like me that really hit close to home. Sadly a lot of the chemicals that you would find at a hazardous waste site are also found in our beauty products, largely because they do remain unregulated. So there's lead it's particularly of concern because it can have irreversible impacts on the brain, especially Children's brain. There's mercury, which is also a known human carcinogen. There could be asbestos in talc related products, another known human carcinogen. There's satellites and parabens process of chemicals called endocrine disrupting chemicals which can mimic hormones in our bodies even at small amounts which are particularly of concern to reproduction. So there can be many chemicals in a product that aren't listed on a label. So for example, because of trade Secret laws, companies don't have to disclose the specific chemical ingredients in the fragrances and certain products. So they can just list fragrance, even though fragrance can include 100 different unique chemicals, some of the conditions that disproportionately, for example, impact black women that may be linked to chemicals in these products include asthma related outcomes, pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, pregnancy related complications that may impact maternal mortality, such as pregnancy related hypertension, gestational diabetes, impaired learning and development in Children. As well as a whole host of different types of cancers. Women who used hair relaxing products as a child, they have a 40% greater risk of early onset period, which is a risk factor for breast cancer. The law around beauty products haven't been updated since 1938, that was before World War II. That's absurd to protect consumers, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively. Keep careful watch for harmful ingredients in cosmetics and for misleading claims and advertisements. The FDA, The agency that is supposed to oversee this industry doesn't have quite frankly the power that it needs to actually do anything. The FDA doesn't know how many cosmetics are on the market in this country. It can't do a recall of something. So it's a really weak law basically useless and we really need reform. There have been bipartisan efforts to update that law, but those have failed in the absence of that. Certain states have started regulating what's in Personal care products. So in an under regulated space, what could we do differently to make the space as products possible and advocate for change credo is the largest clean beauty retailer in the United States for credo, the way that we define clean Credo. Clean standard is really the nexus of safety, sustainability and ethics all held within the through line of transparency. The credo Clean Standard is about 28 pages, very comprehensive guideline that all of our brands have to sign and adhere to. We're trying to accelerate companies free formulations and introduction of safer cleaner beauty products for women of color. Clean Beauty should be about creating products that have the lowest environmental impact and lowest health impact. It's not just about eliminating the toxic chemicals But ensuring the youth and the adoption of favorite chemicals. The global beauty industry is at this point over $550 billion beauty is still an emerging part of that. There's more companies that are trying to make green products. There's also retailers that are trying to have an influence on what's being sold on their shelves. So for example, Target and walmart now have chemical policies on the book, 99 cent stores unfortunately don't and that's still a place where a lot of people buy their products. A lot of clean beauty products really are situated or being promoted at higher end stores right, that may not be accessible to many women of color. One of the things that is important to us at E. D. S is that there's a democratization of clean beauty. The process of making clean products for everyone needs to be a holistic one. So certainly we need to be more of a demand and more investment from investors and from brands at the beginning of when they're conceptualizing products, making sure that there are products for everyone, either targeted especially for certain needs, especially textured hair, for example, or making sure that you have a product that can really serve a wide variety of customers. But I also think that we need to invest more in the industry in terms of just really taking a step back and saying, who is at the table, we need more women and more women of color in positions of power, whether that's as an investor or as an entrepreneur or as chemists and formulate Urz, it's time for companies to really recognize that the ingredients that they may have been using all this time, there are better solutions. We absolutely continue to need a sea change across the entire beauty market. So that means every brand, every retailer and every ingredient supplier putting at the core safer ingredients. We're seeing that customers really want safer, more sustainable products, more equitable products, more transparent products and they're willing to reward those companies that are doing that work with their dollars

And a chemical weapons attack by Russia would "trigger a response in kind.”

Biden says Russia should be removed from the G-20

Politics

Do you think that Russia needs to be removed from the G20 On the latter point? My answer is yes, that depends on the G-20? Um I that was raised today and I raised the possibility if that can't be done. If Indonesia and others do not agree, then we should in my view asked to have both. Um Ukraine be able to attend the meetings as well as Well. Basically, Ukraine being able to attend the G-20 meeting observed to clarify on chemical weapons could if chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO? It would be it would trigger a response in kind whether or not you're asking whether NATO would cross. But we make that decision at the time, we're also announcing new sanctions Of more than 400 individuals and entities aligned with an alignment with the European Union. More than 300 members of the Duma oligarchs and Russian defense companies that fuel the Russian war machine. In addition to the 100,000 US forces now stationed in Europe to defend NATO territory, NATO established as you already know, four new battle groups in Romania. Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia to reinforce the eastern front. Putin was banking on NATO being split. My early conversation with him in december and early january was clear to me, he didn't think we could sustain this cohesion. NATO has never, never been more united than it is today? Putin is getting exactly the opposite what he intended to have as a consequence of going into Ukraine

CEO Mark Costa has the goal to remove more plastic waste from the environment.

Change the World 2021: Eastman Chemical

Franchise_Lists

Change the World 2021: Eastman Chemical


Eastman is a company has been around 100 years part of Kodak and spun off as a separate company. We make a variety materials that go into thermal plastic engine materials, could go into your water bottle here, uh, into cars, renting or paint protection out. Is it going to paint animal nutrition products? Were very diversified company making a materials for a wide range of the market. We have significant environmental challenges. Top of the list is plastic waste as well as climate. And so we're focused on solutions that really address both. How do we get plastic waste out environment and how do we do it at a lower carbon footprint of you more efficient with our natural resources and the impact on emissions. And what we do is we can take plastic that has no alternative life. So it's a compliment of mechanical recycling, which is how, you know, recycling today and unzip it back into its building blocks, purified and then rebuild identical polymers that we make today at a carbon footprint that is substantially better than the current fossil fuel process. So we can take the water bottles that you have. We can actually take textiles that are made out of polyester or even carpet fiber with our technology products that have no alternative use but going to landfill or, you know, unfortunately, sometimes escaping into the environment, we take those polly Esther's and rebuild it back into polymer. Now, most of what we rebuild it back into our products for durable. So we have a tried and be free plastic and we turn that recycled content into this reusable bottles. We can turn it into cosmetic packaging that has, you know, multi use or we could turn it back into PP that's not really our focus. We're trying to upscale it in the durable product. We're really excited. We're already under construction to build 100,000 ton meth analysis plant that will recycle polyester back into a wide range of durable products. So every year we can Return 11 billion bottles back into durable products back into textiles. Right? So we can also make it back into polyester textiles as another source of where we go with material. So, lots of ways to proposals were also in conversations with governments and brands around the world about building a 2nd 3rd, 4th plant, uh, to scale this up and really address this problem on a global basis. Not just what we're doing here. If you just base it on sort of natural gas type products for about 30 to 40% better uh, in our carbon footprint to make the same building blocks. And that's how we're doing the first plant on the energy sources we have today. But the next plant after that, we'll focus on green energy Greenstein. And then you can start getting the carbon footprints to be even at the final product. You can get those, those to be Better than 50% than the fossil-fuel process. So we're eliminating all this oil discovery, petrochemical transportation, etc with one unit. It takes, you know, a little bit of methanol and some energy, and unzips the polymer and then rebuild it back into the original policy.

LG Chem

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